Crossroads Iran: Transregional Cultural (Hi)stories is a project supported by the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation in coordination with the Friends of the Museum for Islamic Art at the Pergamon Museum. The project aims to highlight and tell stories of cultural exchange, transfer of knowledge, practices, techniques and artistic influences, with Iran at the crossroads of these narratives.
The project team traces and explores connections between the museum’s collections, exhibitions, and photographic archives of intertwined histories, engaging in dialogues with Iranian contemporary artists. At the same time, it processes selected photo archives from multiple scholars who visited Iran at different periods, integrating them into the museum’s digital cultural heritage database. In this way, the project makes these materials visible and accessible, publishing stories in hybrid formats on the Museum’s online platform.
Explore the stories of crossroads Iran
Architectural Landscape of Iran
The diversity of landscapes has shaped Iranian life - from agriculture and food to architecture. These connections come to life in the photographs of German geographer Eugene Wirth, who traveled across Iran in the early 1970s. This story explores how Iran's land and culture are deeply intertwined through his lens.
A painting from the Shahnameh – The Persian Book of Kings
Shahnameh - the Persian book of Kings, has shaped the cultural memory and Persian identity for over a thousand years. In the Museum for Islamic Art’s collection there is a painting from one of its greatest illuminated manuscripts, “the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp.” In this story we look at the story behind the painting depicting Simurgh, Zal and Sam in the context of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.
Kashan: Where ceramics shine like gold
Over the past decade, Museum for Islamic Art has been dedicated to unlocking the secrets of luster ceramics through exhibitions, research and workshops. This story takes us back to Kashan and its ceramic legacy, and examines its interwoven relationship with the museum.
A Poetic Painting from Qajar Era
In the collection of the Museum for Islamic Art in Berlin, a nineteenth-century Iranian painting has captivated the restorers, curators, and fellows alike. Its imagery balances the familiar and the celestial motifs, exudes charm, and exemplifies the artistry of Qajar era visual culture in Iran. In 2027, this painting will be exhibited to the public in the halls of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin for the first time since the Museum for Islamic Art reunited Berlin’s collections of Islamic Art and Architecture.It invites viewers to explore connections between heritage and identity. This painting embodies a blend of common poetic images that reflect the intricate and symbolic nature of Iranian art.
Although the painting presents numerous themes that may be explored in greater detail, this story focuses exclusively on the portrayal of feminine forms and celestial elements.
Stations of Place with Gohar Dashti
Gohar Dashti is an Iranian Artist who has most recently been conducting research on the UNESCO World Heritage Site Takht-e Soleyman in Northwest Iran and its surrounding landscape. Artworks from her 'Abstract Horizons' will be incorporated in the museum’s presentation of Takht-e Soleyman and the archaeological remains. In this story, she talks about concepts of mobility, migration and temporary moments of placement with researcher-curator, Margaret Shortle.
Through Shadi Ghadirian’s Lens
Shadi Ghadirian is an Iranian artist based in Tehran, born in 1974. She gained recognition in 1998 with her Qajar series. The Museum for Islamic Art in Berlin holds some of her artworks in its permanent collection. In the following conversation, we discussed her Qajar series, photography in Iran, identity, and the audience's engagement with her art.
Europeans in a Persian blue and white pottery
Chinese blue and white porcelain is world-renowned. However, blue and white ceramics were not only produced in China, but also in Japan, Vietnam, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and Europe, for example. It was rare for a fashion to spread across so many different geographical regions and be locally imitated. In this story we explore an extraordinary object from the collection of the Museum for Islamic Art in Berlin. It is a large, white bowl with cobalt blue painting, which was produced in Iran in the 17th century.
Mihrab Tile from Kashan
Understanding the origins and tracing the journey and ownership of objects in the collection is one of the core responsibilities of a museum. Through provenance research an object can be correctly attributed and we can learn a lot about the object’s cultural significance.
A tile, which is now in the collection of the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin has travelled a long way in its history. In this provenance research story, we trace the origins of a tile that entered the museum collection in Berlin from Spain, but was probably made in the workshops of Kashan.
Explore digitised archival collections on Iran from the Museum for Islamic Art
Through Crossroads Iran, an archive on Iran has been created in the database of the Museum of Islamic Art, bringing together materials on architecture, craft traditions, and everyday life from different historical periods. Selected photographic archives by researchers who visited Iran were processed and integrated into the database.
The archive comprises four main collections:
- Michael Meinecke: Approximately 1,300 objects from the 1970s focusing on architecture and architectural elements.
- Stefan Weber: Around 6,000 objects documenting architecture, crafts, and daily life in the 1990s and in 2018.
- Eugen Wirth: Documentation of craft practices and landscapes from the 1960s to the 1990s.
- Shunhua Jin: Approximately 3,500 objects on architecture and the everyday life of local communities from late 2019 to early 2020.
In total, the archive includes more than 12,000 objects and around 300 locations. Its aim is to preserve Iran’s cultural and architectural heritage and to make it available as a publicly accessible reference resource.