[ad_1]
Russia’s State Hermitage Museum—minimize off from its former Western museum companions since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022—has signed a wide-ranging cooperation settlement with Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Analysis Institute.
The Hermitage’s veteran director Mikhail Piotrovsky, a vocal supporter of the struggle in Ukraine who has had shut ties to Vladimir Putin for the reason that Nineties, was lately added to Canada’s record of Russians sanctioned because of the struggle. He signed a memorandum of understanding on the museum on 2 September with the Iranian archaeologist Mostafa Dehpahlavan, director of the Islamic republic’s heritage institute. Along with operating the Hermitage for many years, Piotrovsky is dean of the School of Asian and African Research at St Petersburg State College.
A press release on the museum’s web site says the Hermitage and the Iranian institute will collaborate on archaeological expeditions, cultural heritage restoration initiatives, educational publications {and professional} growth alternatives for younger students. It additionally describes joint exhibitions as “a obligatory a part of the settlement” by which “the Hermitage will host Days of Iran, whereas Hermitage Days will happen in Tehran”. Based on Iranian and Russian media, Piotrovsky additionally held additional talks with Jabriel Noukandeh, the pinnacle of the Nationwide Museum of Iran.
Western political commentators have characterised Russia’s diplomatic alliances with international locations akin to Iran, North Korea and Myanmar as “pariah solidarity”. Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un promised that financial, humanitarian and cultural points could be on the agenda of their extremely anticipated summit on 13 September. In Moscow, the Second World Battle historical past museum often known as the Victory Museum held a convention in Might marking the seventieth anniversary of the top of the Korean Battle, throughout which the Soviet Union supported North Korea. The museum’s director, Aleksandr Shkolnik, was the primary Russian museum chief to be sanctioned after the invasion of Ukraine.
The Hermitage’s heat relations with Iranian museum officers and students pre-date the struggle, with a web based convention happening in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. 4 years earlier, the 2 international locations held talks on their aspirations to confide in worldwide tourism. The St Petersburg museum has one of many world’s richest collections of Iranian artwork, starting from the third century to the top of the Qajar dynasty within the early twentieth century. It unveiled a revamped everlasting show of the Artwork of Iran in 2021 and now provides a digital tour.
A analysis paper printed in 2020 within the Journal of Materials Cultures within the Muslim World documented how “stolen luster tiles” from Imamzadeh Yahya, a tomb in Varamin, south of Tehran, that was embellished between 1260 and 1310, are held in overseas museums, “particularly the Hermitage and V&A”. Final month, the Tehran Occasions wrote that “Imamzadeh Yahya’s bitter destiny highlights an pressing want for enhanced worldwide cooperation, consciousness, and authorized measures to guard world heritage”.
Russia’s official overseas coverage technique, accredited by Putin earlier this 12 months, prioritises “the full-scale and trustful cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran” with the purpose of “selling interfaith and intercultural dialog and understanding, consolidating efforts to guard conventional religious and ethical values”. Relations with such “pleasant” states are described in distinction to the “aggressive coverage” of “most European states”, seen as “undermining home political stability and eroding conventional Russian religious and ethical values”.
Amid a crackdown on LGBTQ+ and girls’s rights in Russia, Iran has drawn nearer after the “Lady, Life, Freedom” rebellion gripped the nation following the demise of Mahsa Jina Amini in police custody in 2022.
Traditionally, nevertheless, Russian-Iranian relations have been removed from easy. The Russian ambassador to Qajar Iran, Alexander Griboyedov, was killed in Tehran in 1829 by an indignant mob because of a Russian treaty forcing Iran to cede its Caucasus territories. The Treaty of Turkmenchay ended the Russo-Persian Battle.
[ad_2]
Source link
