“One of the greatest pleasures of my life has been to support young artists that shape and form human culture.”

Khānum Fatemeh Safavi-Moghaddam initiated the Moghaddam Art Collection in the 1960s, and despite her advanced age of 92, she remains deeply passionate about contemporary art. Her unwavering interest in discovering and supporting young artists at the outset of their careers has contributed to the rise of several notable figures in the art world. The present task at hand involves cataloguing, verifying, and archiving the collection, which is now under the purview of a younger generation responsible for its preservation and expansion.

Khānum Safavi-Moghaddam is a distinguished member of the Moghaddam clan, a prominent sub-group of the larger Otuziki Persian-Turkish tribe. Her extended family lineage includes a longstanding lineage of governors who ruled over the Karabakh Province throughout the Safavid and Qajar Persia eras. Although her family eventually settled in Tehran and primarily collected Persian Medieval art, including a significant number of Spanish-Moorish antiques, Khānum Moghaddam initiated a radical shift in the collection's focus in the 1960s. She chose to pivot towards supporting young contemporary (Persian) artists, a decision that arose from her extensive international travel as a representative of the Moghaddam International Textile Trading Company. She visited Paris (France) and New York (USA), two countries that had strong economic and cultural ties with Pahlavi Persia, and which were also home to a large number of Persian students on scholarships. As a trained historian, Khānum Moghaddam derived pleasure from supporting artists, writers, and poets of mainly Persian descent by acquiring their works to aid them in their educational journey abroad. Many of the works in the collection were gifted to her as a show of respect for her unwavering dedication and support.