Cyrus Cylinder:
250,000 DC/Houston/NYC Visitors
Heading to the West Coast

The display of the exhibition “Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia” in New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is now concluded, and the exhibition is traveling to the west coast. This touring exhibition, which is organized by the British Museum in partnership with the Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF America), has been on display since March of this year and has been viewed by a whopping 250,000 visitors in three major cities so far. For photos of the exhibition and events in each city, please click on the images below. The British Museum and the Iran Heritage Foundation received acknowledgement letters from president George Bush Sr. for the Houston display and Mayor Bloomberg for the New York display.

Here is a recap of some of the key articles and content about the the tour, and the significance of the Cyrus Cylinder itself:

• Lecture by Dr. John Curtis, Keeper of the Special Middle East Projects and the curator of the exhibition, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (video, one hour)
• The Cyrus Cylinder U.S. Tour: Culture Transcending Politics - Published by the USC Center for Public Diplomacy, on why touring this 2600-year object is so important today.
• Cyrus and Jefferson: Did they speak the same language?
• Cyrus Cylinder US Tour: Seven Years in the making - How the tour came about and was organized.
• CNN’s Christian Amanpour interviews Neil MacGregor, the Director of the British Museum (20-min video and transcript)
• Roger Cohen: Finding the Missing Word
• Press conference keynotes during the launch of the tour – Very informative videos about the history of Cyrus and his cylinder, and the significance of the Cyrus Cylinder today, including Q&A

You can find more articles, complete archive of the videos, and the most recent coverage on the official website of the tour (cyruscylinder2013.com) and on the tour’s facebook page.

The exhibition will now be on display at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco (Aug 9 – Sep 22, see below for details), followed by the Paul J. Getty Museum, the Getty Villa, in Los Angeles (Oct 2 – Dec 2).

Next Stop: San Francisco

The exhibition will be on display at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco starting August 9th. The San Francisco display of the exhibition is generously sponsored by Tina and Hamid Moghadam, and Bita Daryabari and Dr. Reza Malek in collaboration with the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans.

The exhibition will be open to the public during the museum’s regular hours (details). Access to the exhibition is included in the price of the general admission ticket.

On August 9th, The exhibition will open with a press preview event, followed by a panel discussion “The Cyrus Cylinder: Uses, Misuses, and Contemporary Iran“ with some of the well known scholars and figures in the field (tickets), moderated by the director of the Asian Art Museum.

On August 10th (7:00pm) the San Francisco Philharmonic Orchestra will perform Loris Tjeknavorian’s “Cyrus the Great Symphonic Suite” at the Nob Hill Masonic Center (tickets). This is the world premiere of the suite which will be conducted by the composer himself and ispresented by PAAIA.

The museum has an array of events, including member-only exhibition tours, during the six-week display of  The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia: A New Beginning. For a list of museum events around the Cyrus Cylinder exhibition, please click here.