Ithaca College

Zohreh Soltani (Assistant Professor, Art History) presented her work on contested public spaces, protest and the changing meanings of monumentality at the Symposium on the History of Art organized by The Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and The Frick Collection.

The four-week-long annual Symposium sponsored jointly by the Frick Collection and the Institute of Fine Arts of NYU brings together nominated speakers from Art History PhD programs in the northeastern U.S., to present their original research in any field of art history.

Soltani’s paper, “Between Shahyad and Azadi: The Meanings of Monumentality in Revolutionary Tehran” examined the shifting meanings of a contested modern monument in Tehran which has been appropriated by various groups in the country in its relatively short life. Through a close reading of varied types of media including architectural documents, journalistic photographs, memoirs and posters, this work moves beyond the analysis of the imposing physical “monument,” and rethinks it as one part of a monumental public space in the capital of Iran.