Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is delighted to renew its support of the Iranian Culture and Art Club of Fresno this year. The ICAC Fresno is a nonprofit organization founded in 1995 with the goal to promote and preserve Iranian culture, arts and traditions in Fresno and San Joaquin Valley in California. Its cultural and educational activities include Persian language and dance classes, lectures and performance series, and celebration of Iranian holidays, such as Noruz and Yalda.

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The Louvre Museum’s new galleries for Islamic Art recently welcomed distinguished guests, The Honorable Neil Abercrombie, Governor of the State of Hawaii, and his wife, Dr. Nancie Caraway; and Dr. Michael V. Drake, Chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, and his wife, Brenda Drake. Both visits were led by Yannick Lintz, director of the Department of Islamic Art. The Louvre’s collection includes many treasures of Persian art, whose study, publication, exhibition and related educational activities are made possible through the support of the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Fund.

(© Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Raphaël Chipault)

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We would like to welcome Naciem Nikkhah, Lecturer in Persian Language, to San José State University. She currently teaches beginning Persian and advises the Persian Students Association, in addition to her research on the art of the Iranian Diaspora and Persian language and literature. We would also like to congratulate the recipients of Roshan Institute Fellowship, Scholarship and Assistantship in 2013-2014: Hamed Sorourifar; Khaled Ali, Christopher Suard and Michelle Belmessieri-Hogg; and Ume Naqvi and Ritu Sristava, respectively.

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is delighted to share the news from the Persian and Iranian Studies Program. The inaugural Friends of Persian Studies Fundraiser held on October 19 featured Persian music, dance and poetry readings. On November 16, the Seattle Asian Art Museum, in collaboration with the Persian and Iranian Studies Program, hosted the sold out event “An Evening of the Music of Iran” with a performance by the Daneshvar Ensemble. Other activities included a poetry night in celebration of Mehregan and a lecture by Professor Abbas Milani (Stanford University). We would also like to congratulate Daniel Hadidi who received a Mary Gates Leadership Grant for his work as co-president of the Persian Circle, and Kayhan Nejad, who began his M.Phil. in Persian literature at Cambridge University.

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Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is delighted to announce its support of the Persian Culture Program Series at the Honolulu Museum of Art in 2014. The March editions of Bank of Hawaii Family Sunday and ARTafterDARK will celebrate Noruz with a multitude of activities, demonstrations and performances for the education and enjoyment of children, families and adults. The Honolulu Persian Film Festival, scheduled in September, will feature documentaries and short films revealing the richness and diversity of Persian culture and society. Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute congratulates the Honolulu Museum of Art for its efforts to share Persian culture with a broad audience on the island.

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Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute would like to congratulate Dr. Matthew Stolper and the six students who worked under his supervision during summer 2013 on the Persepolis Fortification Archive (PFA) Project at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. The PFA is a group of thousands of tablets discovered by archaeologists from the Oriental Institute in 1933. They offer a rare insight into the Achaemenid Persian Empire, including its languages, art, history and administration. Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute Fellows Emily Wilson, Tytus Mikolajczak, Erin Daly, Christina Chandler, Katherine Livingstone and Seunghee Yie made valuable contributions to the ongoing initiative to identify, catalogue and record seals on these tablets and fragments.

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