Chief Executive’s Review - Year Ending 31st December 2017
Dr John E. Curtis, OBE, FBA
In the course of 2017, fifteen different events were organised by IHF and a further seven events were supported by IHF. Grants were given to eight different projects in addition to supported events, and we supported posts and fellowships in three museums and universities.
These events, projects and posts are all fully described in the report below, but it is worth pointing out that once again we have to tried strike a balance between academic and popular on one hand, and ancient, medieval and contemporary on the other. This year we managed to support two projects in Tehran, the exhibition ‘Parviz Tanavoli and the Lions of Iran’ and a project about Iranian musical instruments. In both cases the funding was locally sourced. Amongst the other events it is undoubtedly invidious to highlight a few of them, but I cannot resist drawing attention to two of them, the Tappeh Sialk and sports conferences. We were very pleased that four colleagues from Iran were able to join us for the Tappeh Sialk conference, including the Director and Deputy Director of the National Museum of Iran. This important initiative, developed in association with Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO), aims to collect together and synthesise what is known about Tappeh Sialk and make recommendations for protecting the site and undertaking further research, both there and in neighbouring Kashan. Highlights of the sports conference were the appearance there of Iranian sporting icon Mansour Bahrami, and the two zurkhaneh performances.
With regard to institutional partnerships, there are two important matters to report. Firstly, the tenth anniversary of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews on 6th June was celebrated by a day of presentations on different aspects of Iranian studies and a dinner hosted by Professor Sally Mapstone, Principal and Vice-Chancellor. It is remarkable that all this has come about both through the energy and vision of Professor Ali Ansari and the support of IHF, which recognised at an early stage the strategic value of supporting an Iranian centre at St Andrews. Secondly, although in 2017 we did not have the resources to support an IHF fellow at LMEI in SOAS, drawing on experience gained during his 2016 IHF fellowship, Dr Hamid Pouran edited a seminal issue of The Middle East in London (vol 13, no 2, Feb-March 2017) that was exclusively devoted to environmental challenges in the Middle East.
During the year I attended and spoke at a number of events in my capacity as CEO of IHF. Connected with safeguarding cultural heritage in the Middle East were a UNESCO conference in Paris in February and the Positive Peace conference in Oxford in May. A conference in Cyprus about underwater archaeology made me (and others) realise what potential there is for underwater archaeology in the Persian Gulf and in the Caspian Sea and how very neglected that subject is. At a conference in Beirut in October I spoke about the newly discovered Persian columned hall at Sidon, built at a time (4th century BCE) when Lebanon was part of the Achaemenid empire. Lastly, I was privileged to be invited to the Young Archaeologists Conference in Tehran University (29th-31st October) and was struck by the huge amount of talent there is amongst the young generation in Iran. The papers were mostly of a very high standard and testified to the extraordinary amount of archaeological research that is being conducted in Iran. It is unfortunate that much of this important material will be published in due course only in Persian and will therefore be inaccessible to most western scholars but IHF can play a valuable role here by arranging the translation into English and publication of some of the more important works. For the record, on 17th May my wife Dr Vesta Sarkhosh and I were awarded jointly by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs the Percy Sykes Medal “in recognition of their outstanding contribution to the improvement of cultural relations between Great Britain and the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
There have been a few governance changes and developments during the year. Kimya Kamshad, Saman Ahsani and Roshanak Dwyer have stepped down as trustees, and Massoud Hoomani has been appointed as a trustee. After an illustrious stint as Chair almost since the inception of IHF, Vahid Alaghband stepped down as Chair and was replaced by Ali Rashidian, with Alireza Rastegar acting as Co-Chair. We look forward to the IHF continuing to go from strength to strength under their leadership. The new Advisory Board, under the chairmanship of Ali Sarikhani, had its first formal meeting and it is already clear that it will make a valuable contribution to the wellbeing of the Foundation. As usual, the IHF has been greatly dependent on voluntary help, particularly from the Norouz Committee, ably chaired by Elahe Kashanchi in 2017, and from the Honorary Treasurer, Bardia Panahy. We are greatly indebted to all of them.
At the time of writing there are a number of exciting initiatives planned for 2018. Foremost amongst these is a partnership arrangement with the Louvre Museum in Paris. We are sponsoring the exhibition that they are sending to Iran entitled ‘Trésors des Collections Nationales Françaises’ and it will be shown at the National Museum in Tehran 5th March - 8th June. We hope this will be the start of a long-standing partnership arrangement with the Louvre. Congratulations are due to Alireza Rastegar for arranging this. Then, in June we are sponsoring training in cultural heritage management for five colleagues from Iran. The training will be delivered by the Oxford-based group ‘Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa’ (EAMENA). This training will be immediately followed by a two-day meeting in London on 2nd-3rd July at which the trainees will have an opportunity to say what they have learnt during the course and to describe their projects. Most of this meeting, however, will be devoted to Tappeh Sialk. This will be a follow-up conference to the very successful conference convened in Asia House on 31st March 2017 when experts from around the world gathered to discuss and appraise Sialk. Last but not least, we are aiming to develop a major project about Persian music.
Meanwhile, plans for organising and sponsoring a major exhibition on Iran are going ahead well although it is too early as yet to make an announcement. The intention is that this exhibition should rival and even surpass the exhibition on Persian art held at the Royal Academy in 1931. In preparation for this show, IHF staff and trustees paid two visits to the ground-breaking exhibition in Bonn on Ancient Iran, consisting entirely of objects sent from Iran.
Through attendance at IHF’s own events and at other events organised by various bodies, it is evident what a strong interest there is in cultural heritage amongst the Iranian community. This was obvious for example at a one-day event organised by the British Iranian Community Development Organisation (BICDO) at SOAS on 10th December. The purpose of this event was to bring together all organisations in London that are somehow involved in Iranian community affairs, and during the day I made a presentation about IHF. It would be gratifying if all those people who wished to show their support for protecting and promoting Iranian cultural heritage could become members of IHF.
Dr John E. Curtis, OBE, FBA,
Chief Executive Officer
These events, projects and posts are all fully described in the report below, but it is worth pointing out that once again we have to tried strike a balance between academic and popular on one hand, and ancient, medieval and contemporary on the other. This year we managed to support two projects in Tehran, the exhibition ‘Parviz Tanavoli and the Lions of Iran’ and a project about Iranian musical instruments. In both cases the funding was locally sourced. Amongst the other events it is undoubtedly invidious to highlight a few of them, but I cannot resist drawing attention to two of them, the Tappeh Sialk and sports conferences. We were very pleased that four colleagues from Iran were able to join us for the Tappeh Sialk conference, including the Director and Deputy Director of the National Museum of Iran. This important initiative, developed in association with Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO), aims to collect together and synthesise what is known about Tappeh Sialk and make recommendations for protecting the site and undertaking further research, both there and in neighbouring Kashan. Highlights of the sports conference were the appearance there of Iranian sporting icon Mansour Bahrami, and the two zurkhaneh performances.
With regard to institutional partnerships, there are two important matters to report. Firstly, the tenth anniversary of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews on 6th June was celebrated by a day of presentations on different aspects of Iranian studies and a dinner hosted by Professor Sally Mapstone, Principal and Vice-Chancellor. It is remarkable that all this has come about both through the energy and vision of Professor Ali Ansari and the support of IHF, which recognised at an early stage the strategic value of supporting an Iranian centre at St Andrews. Secondly, although in 2017 we did not have the resources to support an IHF fellow at LMEI in SOAS, drawing on experience gained during his 2016 IHF fellowship, Dr Hamid Pouran edited a seminal issue of The Middle East in London (vol 13, no 2, Feb-March 2017) that was exclusively devoted to environmental challenges in the Middle East.
During the year I attended and spoke at a number of events in my capacity as CEO of IHF. Connected with safeguarding cultural heritage in the Middle East were a UNESCO conference in Paris in February and the Positive Peace conference in Oxford in May. A conference in Cyprus about underwater archaeology made me (and others) realise what potential there is for underwater archaeology in the Persian Gulf and in the Caspian Sea and how very neglected that subject is. At a conference in Beirut in October I spoke about the newly discovered Persian columned hall at Sidon, built at a time (4th century BCE) when Lebanon was part of the Achaemenid empire. Lastly, I was privileged to be invited to the Young Archaeologists Conference in Tehran University (29th-31st October) and was struck by the huge amount of talent there is amongst the young generation in Iran. The papers were mostly of a very high standard and testified to the extraordinary amount of archaeological research that is being conducted in Iran. It is unfortunate that much of this important material will be published in due course only in Persian and will therefore be inaccessible to most western scholars but IHF can play a valuable role here by arranging the translation into English and publication of some of the more important works. For the record, on 17th May my wife Dr Vesta Sarkhosh and I were awarded jointly by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs the Percy Sykes Medal “in recognition of their outstanding contribution to the improvement of cultural relations between Great Britain and the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
There have been a few governance changes and developments during the year. Kimya Kamshad, Saman Ahsani and Roshanak Dwyer have stepped down as trustees, and Massoud Hoomani has been appointed as a trustee. After an illustrious stint as Chair almost since the inception of IHF, Vahid Alaghband stepped down as Chair and was replaced by Ali Rashidian, with Alireza Rastegar acting as Co-Chair. We look forward to the IHF continuing to go from strength to strength under their leadership. The new Advisory Board, under the chairmanship of Ali Sarikhani, had its first formal meeting and it is already clear that it will make a valuable contribution to the wellbeing of the Foundation. As usual, the IHF has been greatly dependent on voluntary help, particularly from the Norouz Committee, ably chaired by Elahe Kashanchi in 2017, and from the Honorary Treasurer, Bardia Panahy. We are greatly indebted to all of them.
At the time of writing there are a number of exciting initiatives planned for 2018. Foremost amongst these is a partnership arrangement with the Louvre Museum in Paris. We are sponsoring the exhibition that they are sending to Iran entitled ‘Trésors des Collections Nationales Françaises’ and it will be shown at the National Museum in Tehran 5th March - 8th June. We hope this will be the start of a long-standing partnership arrangement with the Louvre. Congratulations are due to Alireza Rastegar for arranging this. Then, in June we are sponsoring training in cultural heritage management for five colleagues from Iran. The training will be delivered by the Oxford-based group ‘Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa’ (EAMENA). This training will be immediately followed by a two-day meeting in London on 2nd-3rd July at which the trainees will have an opportunity to say what they have learnt during the course and to describe their projects. Most of this meeting, however, will be devoted to Tappeh Sialk. This will be a follow-up conference to the very successful conference convened in Asia House on 31st March 2017 when experts from around the world gathered to discuss and appraise Sialk. Last but not least, we are aiming to develop a major project about Persian music.
Meanwhile, plans for organising and sponsoring a major exhibition on Iran are going ahead well although it is too early as yet to make an announcement. The intention is that this exhibition should rival and even surpass the exhibition on Persian art held at the Royal Academy in 1931. In preparation for this show, IHF staff and trustees paid two visits to the ground-breaking exhibition in Bonn on Ancient Iran, consisting entirely of objects sent from Iran.
Through attendance at IHF’s own events and at other events organised by various bodies, it is evident what a strong interest there is in cultural heritage amongst the Iranian community. This was obvious for example at a one-day event organised by the British Iranian Community Development Organisation (BICDO) at SOAS on 10th December. The purpose of this event was to bring together all organisations in London that are somehow involved in Iranian community affairs, and during the day I made a presentation about IHF. It would be gratifying if all those people who wished to show their support for protecting and promoting Iranian cultural heritage could become members of IHF.
Dr John E. Curtis, OBE, FBA,
Chief Executive Officer
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The IHF core staff.
From left: Bardia Panahy, Astrid Johansen, John Watson, Massoumeh Parker, John Curtis, Nahid Assemi |
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