Shah la la

In Berlin we are staying just round the corner from Michael Stevenson and Cornelia Schmidt-Bleek. This time last year we posted on Mike’s work at Art Basel's Unlimited which replicated the framework of a tent used for one of the Shah of Iran’s mega feasts. In researching the exhibition Mike visited Teheran and photographed the still visible, though faded, signage of the Shafrazi Gallery which ended its may fly life with the collapse of the Shah’s reign. Tony Shafrazi now runs a gallery in New York, but back in the 1970s he was a consultant to the Contemporary Art Museum of Iran as the Iranian royal family began to build an art collection. The Shafrazi Gallery, which had its regular stand at this year’s Art Basel, only had one exhibition in Teheran. And who knows how much, or if at all, Sharazi’s taste played in the formation of the collection which is still in deep storage in Teheran. It has remained there, with a brief outing in 2005, since the Shah was ousted by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. An announcement that this incredible collection is about to go on display again resulted in this peek into the store room by ABC News you can see below.
Image: Two women look at works from the collection