The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) is an art museum located next to Laleh Park, in Tehran, Iran. The museum houses a large collection of modern and contemporary Iranian art, as well as one of the most valued collections of modern Western art outside Europe and North America, mostly dating from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. In 1977, having purchased large quantities of art during Iran’s 1970s oil boom, the European-educated Iranian Empress Farah Pahlavi inaugurated TMoCA. The Iranian architect Kamran Diba designed the museum, incorporating elements of traditional Persian architecture into a structure that many consider to be a piece of contemporary art itself. The inauguration of TMoCA prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution exemplified Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s secular monarchy and symbolised a common bond between Iran and the West.