Draft:Alireza Sami Azar

Alireza Sami-Azar (born July 13, 1961) is an Iranian architect, art historian, writer and the founder of Tehran Auction and Art Tomorrow Institute. He is one of the most influential figures in the art scene of Iran. He was responsible for opening up the country’s art scene to international collaboration in the early 2000s when he was the director of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA). Since 2005, Sami Azar has been teaching history of contemporary art and architecture and has written a three- volume treatise on the contemporary art in the West. His books and teachings had a crucial impact on the awareness of Iranian artists and art community about development of contemporary art in Europe and the US. Sami-Azar was director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran from 1998 to 2005. A trained architect whom Mohajerani, the minister of culture, appointed to head both Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art and the government’s regulatory body for the visual arts, the minister had a willing accomplice. Sami-Azar reduced censorship, promoted Iranian artists abroad and built institutional links with the western arts establishment. With two major shows at the museum; a retrospective of British sculpture and an exhibition of superb modern western art from the permanent collection, Sami-Azar showed that he was that rare commodity in revolutionary Iran: a globalist. During his tenure, many outstanding exhibitions were held in the Museum and he provided the opportunity to display the treasures of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art after two decades of post-revolutionary era. Sami-Azar opened the borders for Iranian artists to travel and experience the world and to expose their work to an international audience. In 2007 he was named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Letters by the French Government. Previously in April 15, 2003, he was bestowed the Gold Medal of Honor for his outstanding achievement in art by The National Arts Club in the United States.

Personal life
Sami Azar was born in Tehran, Iran on July 13, 1961. He studied architecture at University of Tehran from 1978 to 1989. Then in 1996, he received his PhD in architecture from the UCE (University of Central England), currently known as BCU (Birmingham City University).Alireza Sami Azar was director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran from 1998 to 2005. During this period, the museum witnessed a growth and prosperity in holding major and well curated exhibitions showcasing works from its permanent collection of western art which had been kept in the vault since the Islamic Revolution. Some of these exhibitions introduced, for the first time, the modern art movements such as Impressionism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism to Iranian public. Also, a series of exhibitions titled Pioneers of Modern Iranian Art displaying the works of Iranian prominent artists, such as Parviz Tanavoli, Hossein Zenderoudi, Massoud Arabshahi, Sohrab Sepehri, Mohsen Vaziri-Moghaddam, Morteza Momayez, Behjat Sadr and Mansooreh Hosseini were held. These exhibitions contributed to introduce the Iranian modern masters to the young generation as many of them had left the country for Europe and the US in the aftermath of the revolution and returned Iran after many years. The historic exhibition of Iranian Conceptual Art held in 2001 is said to have been a turning point in the history of post-revolution Iranian art. The show was followed by two annual exhibitions of new media art entitled New Art. From these events a new generation of Iranian contemporary artists emerged. The other significant event under Sami-Azar directorship was a large exhibition titled Gardens of Persia: Old Wisdom, New Vision held at the TMoCA in the September 2004. The show included a series of antique artworks presented in parallel to texts and images on historical gardens in Iran. But the larger part of the event was comprised of installations, photos and videos by contemporary artists such as Abbas Kiarostami, Shirin Neshat, Avish Khobrehzadeh and Farideh Lashai. In 2004 the museum hosted a show of British sculpture titled Turning Point presenting substantial works by renowned British artists of three generations namely Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Eduardo Paolozzi, Anthony Caro, Richard Deacon, Gilbert and George alongside pieces by contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor, Tony Cragg, Bill Woodrow, Anya Gallaccio and Mona Hatoum. The exhibition was organized in association with the British Council and included pieces from the collections of the Tate, the TMoCA, the Henry Moore Foundation and the British Council. Held in Spring 2005 the exhibition of Masterpieces of Persian Painting dedicated to the introduction of Iranian traditional painting and classical schools was another important event of the museum during his time. Talking about the exchange of 118 pages of King Tahmasb Manuscipt (1524-1576) with a superb painting by Willem de Kooning titled “Woman III” (1953) from the museum collection, occurred in 1994, Souren Melikian, the scholar of Iranian culture and International Herald Tribune art journalist says: “Sami Azar, the museum director appointed long after the event, still mourns the loss of the de Kooning. When pressed, he concedes that the arguments that finally convinced the strongest Iranian opponents against the transaction of its necessity carry considerable weight. If Iran had not acquired the remaining portion of the manuscript, it would have been broken up. Sami-Azar,to whom credit goes for holding an exhibition in a museum fundamentally intended for a different purpose, may find some comfort as he watches the flow of young Iranians peering at the pages.” Sami-Azar also negotiated the loan of important pieces from the museum permanent collection to some European museums for their retrospective exhibitions. The museum hence experienced an unprecedented collaboration with leading European museums. One such case was the loan of one of the greatest works of the collection, a Francis Bacon’s triptych, Two Figures Lying on a bed with attendants (1968) to Tate Britain and Edinburgh’s Museum of Modern Art. During Sami Azar’s tenure, the museum supported more than 50 exhibitions of Iranian contemporary art abroad at such venues as the Meridian International Center in Washington, D.C., London’s Barbican Center and the National Arts Club in New York. In 2005, before resigning from directing of the museum, he curated an exhibition titled Modern Art Movement presenting significant pieces from the foreign artists’ works within the collection. The list of paintings and sculptures was truly impressive: not only for the names, but often for the importance of the pieces that appear in the collection. From Monet to Sol LeWitt, it could be said that the entire major history of the arts from impressionism to conceptual art was represented. Monet with Degas and Pissarro; and then van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Vuillard to link the post-impressionist tradition to the School of Paris (Piscine, Dufy, van Dongen, Rouault, among others); German expressionism: from Nolde to Beckmann, passing through their roots in Ensor; Picasso, including a sculpture, and Matisse; Klee and Kandinsky, Leger and Delaunay, Braque and Chagall; surrealism, figurative and abstract: from Magritte and Dali, to Ernst and Mirò. After the war, equally extraordinary was the documentation of American art, from the action painting of Pollock and de Kooning, of Kline and Motherwell, to the splendid Rothkos, to neo-dada (Rauschenberg, Jones, Dine) to pop art (Indiana, Rosenquist, Lichtenstein and, of course, Warhol). Finally, (but still skipping a lot) Fautrier, Soulages and Dubuffet, documenting the first French informal, and the isolated, great figure of Giacometti. At the same time (1998-2005) he was a university professor and a member of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tehran University. He resigned from his positions as director of Museum in March 2005, but the minister didn’t accept his resignation because of the Iranian artists protest. A few months later, he resigned again from the museum and the university in 2005. Then, he spent his time writing various articles and books about the contemporary art in the world and also lecturing and teaching these topics. In 2012 Sami-Azar launched Tehran Auction as an independent and private initiative to introduce the best of Iranian art ranging from established and emerging artists to Iranian art collectors and global audience. As the leading art market institution in Iran, Tehran Auction aims to support the domestic art market as a key basis for the international market. It works widely with Iranian art galleries and collectors to ensure a vast and strong selection of paintings, sculptures and photographs. In 2018 he founded the Art Tomorrow cultural & educational institute as a center for exchanging ideas and experiences in the field of culture and the arts. The institute is aimed at presenting professional and advanced masterclasses in various fields of the arts and literature. It is intended to enhance artistic knowledge and awareness of young artists, art students and art lovers. Currently, various courses and workshops are being held in the field of visual arts, theater, cinema, philosophy, literature, Iranian studies and interdisciplinary studies. The courses are taught by the most prominent teachers as well as renowned artists and scholars.

Books
Movements in Contemporary Art: Postmodern Waves (2020) Movements in Contemporary Art: Conceptual Revolution (2012) Movements in Contemporary Art: Rise & Decline of Modernism (2009) The Birth of Iranian Modernism (2017) Movements in Art Since 1945 by Edward Lucie-Smith, Translated to Farsi (2001)