IRANICA: MODES OF TRANSMISSION

Like many American institutions, Bryn Mawr College holds a small collection of ceramics and works on paper from medieval Iran. Any one of these objects could be made to speak to the history of Iranian art and culture. Taken together, however, they testify more clearly to the enthusiasms that motivated western collectors of Iranica, and the mechanisms by which their desires were fulfilled. In this exhibit we describe three "modes of transmission" through which objects made in Iran were translated to western collections.






		An exhibition held in the Rhys Carpenter Library, Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2005 Benjamin Anderson and Yael Rice, Exhibition Curators


		Like many American institutions, Bryn Mawr College holds a small collection of ceramics and works on paper from medieval Iran. Any one of these objects could be made to speak to the history of Iranian art and culture. Taken together, however, they testify more clearly to the enthusiasms that motivated western collectors of Iranica, and the mechanisms by which their desires were fulfilled. In this exhibit we describe three "modes of transmission" through which objects made in Iran were translated to western collections.