The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art has started making its collection accessible on the internet, publishing around 1,000 works so far with the remainder to be added gradually. Director Reza Dabirinejad announced the project as the museum approaches its 50th anniversary, presenting the online catalogue as a step towards greater openness about a collection that has long been among the least publicly documented of its kind.

The museum, founded in 1977 and designed by architect Kamran Diba, holds more than 4,000 works, including the largest collection of Western modern art in the East alongside a major holding of modern Iranian art. Its Western works, assembled in the years before the 1979 revolution, include pieces by Picasso, Warhol, Pollock, Bacon and Rothko, and the collection is frequently described as one of the finest groups of modern art outside Europe and North America.

For decades, much of that material was kept in storage and rarely shown, which made the new online publication a notable change of approach. The museum has invited specialists and members of the public to help correct and improve the information attached to each work, turning the catalogue into a shared research effort rather than a finished statement.

Alongside the digital project, the museum intends to create a permanent gallery for its most prominent pieces, giving visitors a fixed point of contact with works that have often rotated in and out of view. The combination of an expanding online record and a dedicated physical display suggests a deliberate effort to bring a historically guarded collection into wider circulation as the institution marks five decades.