Today’s Ynet has an article about the first non-Islamic art exhibit in Iran since the 1979 revolution.

It seems someone in the regime has understood that some steam needs to be released – via art, among other things. The country’s museums, including the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, have displayed only Islamic art which supports the spirit of the regime and doesn’t expose too much of the West’s creative riches.

Imagine all that great stuff – Giacometti, Picasso, Pollock – locked away in a museum basement for thirty-odd years, presumably in favor of showing the enticing calligraphy and dizzying pattern repetitions of “acceptable” Islamic art. Come to think of it, it’s not all that different from Pollock, Warhol or Frank Stella. Go figure.