Monday, August 10, 2026

Meet the Talent: Nine Iranian Artists Go on Show at London’s Parasol Unit

By Tim Cornwell Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, a respected London exhibition space, celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. In a venue that usually ignores national labels, founder and director Ziba Ardalan has gone...

Empress Farah’s Pre-Revolution Curator Donna Stein Tells Tehran Museum Story in New Book

By Tim Cornwell In May 1975, a group of prominent Iranians arrived in New York for a shopping spree with a difference. They included Dr. Karim Pasha Bahadori, the director of Empress Farah Diba’s private...

‘The Night,’ First U.S.-Made Film To Be Released in Iran, Impresses U.S. Film Critics 

By Tim Cornwell Sometime this year, an Iranian-American movie will make history. “The Night” -- a hallucinatory horror film by the young director Kourosh Ahari -- will be the first U.S.-produced movie to show in...

Collected from LA to Azerbaijan, Artist Afshin Naghouni Discusses Nationalism, Nostalgia

By Tim Cornwell Afshin Naghouni’s studio is tucked away underneath a railway arch in West London. Commuter trains drown out the conversation every few minutes, as they rattle and thunder overhead.   The Grenfell Tower, an...

Meet Iranian-Jewish Standup Comedian and Harvard Fellow Noam Shuster-Eliassi

By Tim Cornwell Did you hear the one about Harvard University giving a grant to an Iranian-Jewish comedian to make a one-woman show in the name of bringing peace to the Middle East? Noam Shuster-Eliassi’s working...

Venice Turns Persian (Almost) With Multiple Shows of Iranian Art

By Tim Cornwell Steps away from the glistening Grand Canal is a corner of Venice that has turned Iranian this summer. In the 17th-century palace that is the city’s music school, where grand courtyards with Roman...

Portraying the Rich Kids of Tehran: Meet Javaad Alipoor, Rising Star of British Theater

By Tim Cornwell On a recent visit to Iran, the British-Iranian playwright Javaad Alipoor found himself at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, looking at a work by the painter David Hockney. Hockney -- who...