Will Heaven

The empress of art

The widow of the Shah of Iran was painted by Warhol and assembled the greatest collection of art outside of Europe. She talks to Will Heaven about the stupidity of the current regime

issue 15 December 2018

Somewhere in the bowels of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is a portrait from a lost world. Its subject is a beautiful young woman: Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Farah Pahlavi of Iran. The condition of the work, however, a luminous print by Andy Warhol from 1977, is so bad that it could be a metaphor for Iran itself.

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