Iran’s impressive collection of Western art

DAYS BEFORE Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric, won Iran’s presidential election in June, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art reopened to the public after a long refurbishment. It made for a strange juxtaposition. Mr Raisi celebrates the decline of American influence; his culture minister rails against “the deviation and secularism” of Iran’s art scene. Yet the museum welcomed back visitors with a retrospective of Andy Warhol, the American pop-artist. Fashionable men and chador-clad women gazed at portraits of Marilyn Monroe, the blonde seductress, and a mocking rendition of Mao Zedong, the Chinese dictator (pictured, from an old exhibition).