Exhibition catalogue page for the star attraction of Japan’s recent Jackson Pollock: A Centennial Retrospective
Photos by Lee Rosenbaum. Video by Helen Harrison
[UPDATE: here]
Usually, when a loaned masterpiece gets returned unscathed, all is well.
But in yet another blow to cultural exchange, a highly important Jackson Pollock, “Mural on Indian Red Ground,” 1950, although arriving safely in Iran after having been loaned to two Japanese museums by the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, did not make it back to its home museum. In a bizarre turn of events, it was reportedly seized on May 11 by the government of Iran.
Agence France-Presse reports:
Iran’s customs service is holding on to a multimillion-dollar painting by U.S. artist Jackson Pollock over “undeclared debt” owed to it by the Islamic Republic’s cultural authorities, an official from Tehran’s museum of contemporary arts told the Mehr news agency Tuesday.
There have been no subsequent reports saying if or when it may be returned.
In my recent post tied to my Wall Street Journal article about the Pollock/Orozco Men of Fire show at Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum, I noted that there was only one full-blown Pollock retrospective scheduled for this, the artist’s centennial year—Jackson Pollock: A Centennial Retrospective, organized by the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, and later seen at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, where it closed on May 6. I mentioned that the show’s “trump card” was the previously unloaned work from Tehran (which had been acquired during the reign of the last Shah of Iran).
The Japanese show was curated by Tetsuya Oshima of the Aichi Prefectural Museum. He must be highly dismayed by this contretemps, which might never had occurred had he not borrowed the work:
Tetsuya Oshima, curator, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, at Dartmouth’s “Men of Fire” show in April, standing beside Pollock’s “Naked Man with Knife,” c. 1938-1940, Tate Gallery
Here, courtesy of Helen Harrison, director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton, NY, is a video snippet showing the installation of Iran’s Pollock last November in Nagoya (where it was displayed Nov. 11-Jan. 22):