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“Persian Shiite Pilgrimage Art: The Case Study of 18th-21th Century Religious Architectural Mural Paintings”2nd talk: (National Museum of Ethnology, 26th Feb. 2014, 3:30 pm)Classification, Functions, and Dispersion of Persian Religious Architectural Mural PaintingsDespite being unique in the Islamic world, generally speaking Persian religious architectural mural paintings (Imamzadeh and Boq’eh) are absent from the most of the studies of historians and specifically historians of Islamic Art who are interested in and have worked on Persian mural paintings of Iran (Adle 1996; Babaie 1994, 2006; L. Diba 1989, 1998, 2001, 2006, Floor 1999, Soucek 2000). Instead, there exist a very few short but precise reports by other scholars on such Persian Shiite pilgrimage paintings (M. Diba 1939; Godard 1939; Masse 1960; Morgenstern 1939; Princeton 1932; Rogers 1970; Siassi 1939; Vinchon 1925). Exceptions in this view are works carried out by two other Western scholars (Chelkowski 1989; Peterson 1979, 1981) who erroneously attempted to interpret such Persian religious mural paintings as elements of the Shiite public ceremony Ta’ziyeh, or considered them as one of the many types of the “popular visual art” (which is again an incorrect expression to use) of those periods of Iran, such as Naqqashiyh Qaveh Khaneh or Pardeh.In this seminar, with the help of recent anthropological approaches, fieldwork from Iran and very recent findings from the photo archive of the Golestan Palace Museum, we will present Persian religious architectural mural paintings (Imamzadeh and Boq’eh), the reasons underlying their execution and their various functions as pilgrimage art of such religious and sacred Persian Shiite architecture.