TEHRAN -- Film expert Mohammadreza Mehrandish was appointed curator of the National Museum of Iran on Sunday, replacing Mohammadreza Kargar, who is an archaeologist.

He is taking the post that was previously held by academics such as Ezzatollah Negahban, who was the father of Iranian archaeology, and Seifollah Kambakhshfard, Firuz Baqerzadeh, and Mehdi Bahrami, who have participated in the excavation of thousands archaeological sites and have written many academic papers.
Mehrandish is a close friend of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) Director Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaii.
He was formerly the director of the CHTHO Public Relations Office. He resigned from that post last August, saying that he wanted to resume his academic studies.
However, shortly afterwards he was named as the secretary of a celebration that was to commemorate the fact that Isfahan’s Naqsh-e Jahan Square had avoided being placed on UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger.
The week-long celebration was scheduled to commence on November 10 but was cancelled after officials and religious figures of Isfahan Province objected, saying the plan was too extravagant.
Since its establishment in 1933, the National Museum of Iran has had 14 other curators, all of whom had degrees in relevant fields.
However, Mehrandish has visited the museum only three times for administrative missions, he said during a ceremony held on Sunday to introduce him as the new curator.
“I am 42 years old. I was thrown into the management system of the country when I was 18,” he added.
“After I took a job at the CHTHO, I thought I should make studies in the field of art research,” Mehrandish stated.
The ceremony continued with the farewell speech of former curator Kargar.
He described the condition of the museum as “catastrophic” when he was appointed to manage the institution in 1996.
He said that the museum greatly improved due to the policy he pursued during his tenure.
Over the past decade, the museum has conducted many joint projects with France, Italy, Spain, and other countries which are very advanced in the field of museum management, and also has held several unique exhibitions displaying Iranian artifacts and museum objects throughout the world.
Kargar is a professor at Tehran’s Allameh Tabatabaii University and a member of the Academic Board of Azad Islamic University.
---------Purge of “uncooperative” managers
A new wave of appointments is underway in the management system of the CHTHO, the Sunday edition of the Persian daily Tehran-e Emruz quoted CHTHO Deputy Director for Cultural Affairs Hossein Jafari as saying.
Yet, some CHTHO staff members described the changes as a purge of managers who do not follow the line of the CHTHO director.
Jafari, who is a supporter of Mehrandish, said that the CHTHO director asked him to make the replacements in line with the policy of safeguarding human resources!
In response to a question by a Tehran-e Emruz reporter, who asked why he had not chosen a museum expert or an archaeologist for the position, Jafari inexplicably said, “An archaeologist has to work on excavation projects, and a member of an academic board should attend classes organized by a university. Thus they can not manage a museum.”
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