H.I.M FARAH Royal Collection
It was valued by Christie’s at $250 million five years ago. Down the ramp, the students arrive at a pair of wall-size Mark Rothkos, each valued at $100 million to $200 million. Their professor bids them ponder a quote from the painter printed nearby: “A painting is not about an experience. It is an experience.”
As lurches toward reengaging with the world after the end of years of sanctions, a crown jewel waits in history’s shadow. Built by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi, just before the 1979 revolution, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art amassed the greatest collection of modern Western masterpieces outside Europe and North America—and dropped off the map. Now it’s reemerging.
