Established in 2008 by Iranian curators Tarlan Rafiee and Yashar Samimi Mofakham, Bread & Salt is an artistic, curatorial and cultural project.
The project's title and concept, Bread & Salt, is derived from an ancient Persian tradition. Bread and salt are the least Persians offer their guests to create an unquestioning and everlasting friendship. A connection made over a table where bread and salt have been served is one of the strongest bonds in Persian culture.
The goal has been to create such a bond in the Bread & Salt Curatorial Projects by introducing lesser-seen aspects of the Persian culture to other cultures through art.
Bread & Salt Projects have collaborated with international institutions and museums such as the British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Tyrolean State Museum (Tiroler Landesmuseum), Ducal Palace Museum of Mantova (Palazzo Ducale Mantova), Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) in several occasions by lending the archival materials, lending its collection of Iranian works, holding panels and lectures as well as donating numerous works of art to enrich the Iranian collection of international institutions.
Bread & Salt Collection, with more than 500 works of art, including sculpture, paintings, photographs, works on paper and printmaking, primarily focuses on early modern (Qajar period) and modern Iranian art. But the collection also includes works from Iranian contemporary artists and a selected collection of non-Iranian modern and contemporary art.
Besides the art collection, Bread & Salt also holds historical artefacts such as textiles, Naïve art, religious posters and paintings from the beginning of the century, hundreds of original photographs and glass-plate negatives from the beginning of the century, documents on modern Iranian history, including the days of the revolution in 1979, documents, photographs, posters and recorded sounds from 8 years of the Iran-Iraq war, the history of graphic design in Iran, original celloloids from the golden age of animation in Iran, Qajar manuscripts and lithographs and more.