Kaarnamaa Institute of Art and Visual Culture works to accomplish its mission through three distinct, yet interconnected departments: 

Publication

Kaarnamaa; A Journal of Art History and Criticism analyzes global modern art and visual culture in the twenty-first century. Established in 2017, the journal publishes (both in print and online) scholarly essays, articles, and reviews which are edited to discover connections and patterns among artists and exhibitions. One of the projects embedded in the print version of the journal is the Meta-Text, in which the journal invites artists to take over around twelve pages of the quarterly to create a project akin to an artist’s book.

Kaarnamaa: A Journal of Art History and Criticism is registered under ISSN number 2578-9287 at the Library of Congress. Please see the journal’s archive below.

Education

Kaarnamaa is also invested deeply in training the new generation of art historians, critics, and art writers through academic courses which strive to be part of the alternative modes of contemporary education and scholarship outside traditional academia. One of these courses, “The History of Modern Art in Iran”, is a transdisciplinary lecture and seminar series that offers precise and diverse narratives of the subject in collaboration with a wide range of scholars in Iran and in the diaspora. Alongside this course, Kaarnamaa also publishes the Chronology of Modern Art and Visual Culture in Iran; a visual study of the topic from the Persian Constitutional Revolution in 1905 to the present day.

Public Programs and Oral History

In the past ten years, Kaarnamaa has been in constant conversation with artists, writers, critics, and curators, providing direct access to their works and words. Through talks, lectures, panels, and interviews, Kaarnamaa records the diverse voices of contemporary artists and helps reconstructing the broken narratives of modern art in Iran. This includes Kaarnamaa’s semiannual panel of critics which analyzes and discusses the most significant art events of Iranian art today. In 2018, based on this unparalleled collection of first-hand narratives, the Institute launched the Oral History Project as the first part of its Archives of Iranian Art. Kaarnamaa has benefited from the contribution of many artists, writers, and scholars to compile and process these resources.