Berlin's Gemäldegalerie will be the first-ever foreign venue for sixty 20th-century European and American masterworks, along with key works by Iranian artists, recently unveiled from the hidden collection of Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA). From December 4, 2016, to February 26, 2017, the exhibition resides in Berlin before travelling to the MaXXI museum in Rome. 

Earlier, the German leg of the exhibition was threatened by a grievous action by the Tehran museum's director, Majid Moullanourouzi, who "had handed over an award in a caricature contest in which some of the cartoons denied the Holocaust and Holocaust victims were ridiculed," reports DW. "For the Germans, the move was more than a faux-pas, it was an absolute taboo."

The situation was resolved when Tehran replaced the museum director with Iran's Deputy Culture Minister Ali Moradkhani for duties involving the exhibition collaboration, according to DW. Another sticking point was Tehran's high initial asking price for the loaned exhibition - once at around $3 million. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, has also been reported to be in discussions to show the collection.

Much of TMoCA's artwork has been completely out of sight for nearly 40 years. It is said to be valued at $3 billion and include top-tier works by August Renoir, Jackson Pollock, Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch, Mark Rothko and more.

"It is the most significant collection of 20th-century Western art outside of Europe or North America," Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, told DW. 

The late Shah's wife, former empress Farah Pahlavi, who lives in the U.S. and Paris, assembled the collection. It remained hidden in vaults after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.