World History and Culture: Exhibition "Luxury of Decline: Iran of the Qajar Era" to open in Moscow

On May 15, 2021, the State Museum of Oriental Art (Moscow) will launch the exhibition "Luxury of Decline: Iran of the Qajar Era". A large-scale exhibition project will reveal a little-known page of Iranian history and art - the period of the late XVIII - early XX centuries. The exposition also features historical documents from the State Archives of the Russian Federation.

For the first time in Russia, it presents more than 300 items from the extensive Iranian collection of the State Museum of Oriental Art. The single exposition comprises paintings and miniatures, ceramics and glass, wooden and metal artworks, carpets and painted textile, manuscripts and weapons. Most of the exhibits are showcased for the first time.

The exposition is made up of several thematic sections. It reveals various aspects of the life of Iranian society in the XIX - early XX centuries: the ideology of supreme power, religious practices and popular superstitions, relations with foreigners and the impact of European fashion, military traditions and crafts, as well as everyday culture, which combined modern innovations and ancient customs.

Only in recent times, art critics and museum specialists have recognised the significance of the underestimated Qajar art and decided to show the works of this period. Exhibitions were held in New York (Brooklyn Museum, 1998), Lance (Louvre-Lance, 2014), Baku (Heydar Aliyev Center with the participation of the Tbilisi Museum of the History of Georgia, 2019). The first in this series was an exhibition of paintings from the State Museum of Oriental Art (Moscow, State Museum of Oriental Art, 1973) in the early 1970s.

The collection of Kajar art of the State Museum of Oriental Art contains more than one thousand art objects. It is one of the most representative in the world along with the collections of the Louvre in Paris, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the State Hermitage Museum.

The exhibition promotes an extensive educational program: excursions of curators, lectures, concerts.