Through a series of coincidences, I was invited by the municipality of Tehran to serve as a juror for its First International Sculpture Symposium in March 2007. Although hesitant at the outset, I accepted out of a sincere curiosity to see what kind of sculpture was being produced in that part of the world. My experience in Iran proved immensely rewarding on many levels. The week-long visit afforded an opportunity to meet with Iranian artists and to reflect on public-scale sculpture in the context of a Middle Eastern urban environment. Because the symposium was international, I also had occasion to view these large-scale works in relation to those of other artists invited from various parts of the world. In addition to serving as a juror, I visited the studio of Behrooz Daresh and later viewed photographs of land works by Ahmad Nadalian, both leading Tehran sculptors whom I had first met at the Venice Biennale in 2003.
