About this Project and Exhibition

Mission

This independent project has been created and governed by individuals beyond institutions and financially supported mainly by competitive academic grants. Its primary mission is to increase awareness and understanding of the Emamzadeh Yahya shrine complex and its dispersed tiles, collections, and archives, without pursuing commercial, political, or institutional objectives. The project is committed to accessibility and the open and equitable dissemination of knowledge.

Through our interdisciplinary collaborations and multi-format modes of presentation, we chart an alternative course for how research is conducted and shared across disciplines, languages, and audiences. Through our curatorial interventions, we seek a more balanced and inclusive museological space for experiencing and exhibiting Persian art. Through our holistic study of one relatively small site, we offer a general exploration of Persian art and Iranian culture from the medieval period to the present.

We hope that the educational resources presented in this website will be useful to students working on Persian art and Iranian studies around the world.

History

This independent project emerged in the wake of a late 2020 co-authored article by Keelan Overton and Kimia Maleki exploring the present history of the Emamzadeh Yahya shrine complex. Over the course of 2021 and 2022, Overton developed the project’s goals, methods, and participants, and in September 2022, she announced the then ‘virtual exhibition’ in an essay on Platform. In early 2023, Khamseen kindly agreed to host the website within its new Projects tab and gave it its own url and web hosting platform. The core website team (Julia Falkovitch-Khain, Hossein Nakhaei, and Overton) began the process of designing and building the website from scratch (hand-coded by Falkovitch-Khain in PHP). Concurrently, Overton continued commissioning and editing contributions and preparing them for publication. The fall of 2023 was a pivotal period: the first essay was designed on the website, completed texts in English began to be translated into Persian, and sustained observational fieldwork commenced at the site (Maryam Rafeienezhad). The interdisciplinary research team continued its efforts, and three grants awarded in spring-summer 2024 enabled the expansion of the website team to include Hoda Nedaeifar and Alisala Nunes. During the second half of 2024, all contributions in Persian were translated into English, all curatorial labels in English were translated into Persian, the website was mirrored in both languages, and proofreading was completed. The website launched on January 15, 2025 with contents at about 90% complete. The addition of coming soon features is contingent on funding.

Website Details

This open-access website is an online exhibition, exhibition catalog, academic edited volume, and multimedia production all in one. The website is mirrored in English and Persian and navigable in both languages, but not all contents are translated. The website includes:

• About 70 scholarly contributions by over 40 contributors worldwide
• Content in three languages (English, Persian, and French)
• 15 contributions in translation
• 6 galleries
• 15 essays
• 6 films*
• 10 digital interactives
• A checklist of 51 physical things and ephemeral experiences

*The project’s films are also presented on our YouTube channel, in high resolution and with subtitles.

The website is hand coded by Julia Falkovitch-Khain. Its security and maintenance are kindly provided by the University of Michigan’s LSA TS and ITS.

How to Cite

Teams

Director of the Emamzadeh Yahya Project (2021–25): Keelan Overton

Design and Media

• Graphic design: a collaboration between Keelan Overton, Hossein Nakhaei (creator of the homepage image), Genesis Gonzales, and Julia Falkovitch-Khain. The homepage’s composite image combines Jane Dieulafoy’s photograph of the Emamzadeh Yahya complex taken in June 1881 (Bibliothèque de l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, 4 Phot 18 [1], p. 65, no. 129) and Hossein Nakhaei’s photograph from 2013.
• Ongoing construction and population of the website: a collaboration between Julia Falkovitch-Khain and Keelan Overton
• Exhibition logo: designed by Hoora Hosseini Bafi, with nastaʿliq calligraphy by Hamidreza Ghelichkhani. The trefoil/heart/peacock motif is inspired by the repeating pattern in the upper border of the stucco inscription inside the tomb.
• Music: Mehdi Hesamizadeh (composition, post-production, viola) and Bastian Duncker (ney). The playing of the ney was inspired by a man playing ney in the courtyard of the Emamzadeh Yahya (see Rafeienezhad’s essay, aud. 1). The long composition with viola and ney is based on a poem by the Persian Sufi poet Fakhr al-Din ʿEraqi (d. 688/1289) from his عشاق‌نامه (ʿasheq-nameh). Hesamizadeh transformed the rhythm and dynamics and interpreted them in a musical way. This music appears in many of the exhibition’s films.
• Miscellaneous video editing: Hamid Abhari, Hossein Nakhaei, Zoey Solomon

Editing and Translation

This website presents about 70 contributions in English, Persian, and French.

Editor: Keelan Overton (see the Editorial Notes)

Contributors

Producer

This website is an independent production and publication of 33 Arches, the academic studio of Director Keelan Overton.

Host

This website is hosted by Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online. In early 2023, Khamseen kindly agreed to support the project by giving it its own website URL and web hosting platform and seating it within its Projects tab. As the host, Khamseen is responsible for the website’s security and maintenance, in collaboration with the University of Michigan’s LSA TS and ITS. Khamseen also supports the website’s marketing on social media.

Funding

This project and website have been partially supported by academic grants and partially unfunded. Funding has been generously provided by:

• Department of the History of Art, University of Michigan: seed grant awarded to Overton in March 2023
• Persian Heritage Foundation: research grant awarded to Overton in October 2023
• GINGKO: Werner Mark Linz Memorial Grant awarded to Overton in April 2024
• University of Michigan: Arts Research: Incubation & Acceleration grant awarded to Khamseen, with a portion allocated to this project (thank you to co-applicants Christiane Gruber and Mira Xenia Schwerda)
• The Barakat Trust: Major Award (A3) awarded to Overton in June 2024 (received in February 2025)

This funding has mainly been used for website design, translation, research and curatorial assistance, Persian editing and copyediting, video editing, and project management. Research funds also supported research in Paris and London and the delivery of talks in Paris, London, and Istanbul (Keelan Overton, EHESS, May 24, 2024 and V&A, June 25, 2024; Maryam Rafeienezhad, Fortitude in Face of Turmoil, 4–6 September 2024, Institut Français d’Etudes Anatoliennes; Hamid Abhari, V&A fellowship, summer 2025).

Two separate fellowships awarded to Overton were fundamental to the early development of the project and final research: a Getty Scholar fellowship at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in fall 2021 and a residency at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris in spring 2024.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all of the individuals listed on this page who have contributed their expertise and talents to this project. We sincerely thank our financial supporters and the host of this website, Khamseen. We also extend our gratitude to the many other colleagues and friends worldwide who have helped this project behind the scenes, offering advice, support, access, and collaboration along the way.

Director’s thanks

Launch

The website launched on 15 January 2025 / 26 Dey 1403.

Launch announcement (press release) in English, Persian, and French.

Contact Us

• For questions about the project and website, please contact Dr. Keelan Overton, Director, 33arches.overton@gmail.com.
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