July 2026 at The Barakat Trust
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A Shrine Online: How One Collaborative Museological Projected Is Reuniting An Iranian Shrine
July 2026 with The Barakat Trust:
- New podcast – A Shrine Online: The Case of Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin, with Keelan Overto
- Grant spotlight – Uncovering Sicily’s Islamic Heritage, Layer by Laye
- Upcoming events and exhibitions
The Emamzadeh Yahya website on a phone within the Emamzadeh Yahya complex, Varamin. The tomb is visible behind. Photograph by Hamid Abhari, December 2025.
In the city of Varamin, some 50km southwest of Tehran, lies the Shrine and Mausoleum of Emamzadeh Yahya, a site of pilgrimage and veneration for Shi’i Muslims.
During the nineteenth century, all of the shrine’s luster tiles, including its mihrab, were stolen and then dispersed to museums worldwide. The focus of this podcast is the project, supported by The Barakat Trust, that has sought to reunite the disconnects that have long afflicted this site, its worshippers, and audience. The project is an online museological intervention in the form of a website that combines many aspects of the shrine, from its architectural features to ritual practices, from an urban history of the city to the stories of the shrine’s keepers and attendants.
The website is a sizeable digital publication that is being completed as we speak and includes content in Persian, English, and French. Click here to explore the website.
The leader of the project and guest on this month’s episode is Keelan Overton. She has led a team of over 50 individuals who collaboratively contributed to the creation of this project that experimented with format, media, and technology to connect audiences in Iran and beyond to Emamzadeh Yahya and his shrine.
Keelan Overton is an art historian trained at Williams College and UCLA (PhD 2011). Since 2015 she has been an independent scholar. Her first book project was the Iran-Deccan edited volume published by IUP in 2020. She then transitioned immediately into the Emamzadeh Yahya project, which she has directed and produced from her home office since 2021.
A final note from Keelan
“Please keep a look out for the tomb’s wooden Safavid door dated 971/1563 and inscribed with Yahya ebn-e Ali’s genealogy, subsequently stolen, whereabouts unknown. It is currently only known visually through its reproduction in a 1915 sales catalog. The door is no. 15 on the exhibition’s Checklist. Its inscriptions were recorded in 1863 (see Textual Source in the Building gallery).”
Uncovering Sicily’s Islamic Heritage, Layer by Layer
The remains of the castle at Terravecchia, Sicily. Photo by Nicolò Pini.
Sicily doesn’t frequently conjure images of a significant Islamic past. If it does, visitors flock to the Cappella Palatina of Palermo, a Norman chapel inspired by Islamic architectural styles.
Nicolò Pini’s project, “Living in Late Antique Rural Sicily, between Byzantium and Islam”, supported by The Barakat Trust in 2024 took a team of archaeologists away from the island’s capital and into the hills of Terravecchia di Caltavuturo.
Terravecchia was one of the most important settlements in the mountainous area to the east of Palermo and continuously inhabited from the 9th- to 15th-centuries after which its gradual decline began. After limited archaeological work in recent years, Nicolò’s project set out to map and excavate parts of the site.
The first phase of the project used a drone to complete a full photogrammetric survey of the site. The data from this survey was used to generate a 3D model of the site. To see the model click here.
The second phase saw the excavation of different parts of the castle including some pottery finds and possible evidence of later reconstructions, highlighting settlements patterns in the area. The full findings and analysis of the project will be published by Nicolò in an upcoming journal article.
Thank you to Nicolò (and Filippo Iannì as drone co-pilot) for the photos, and congratulations to the entire team on the completion of this important project.
Worth Attending
A brief compilation of museum exhibitions and cultural events taking place around the world over the next few weeks.
The Islamic Art Museumscape: The Jameel Gallery 20th Anniversary Conference
Victoria & Albert Museum. London.
Friday 17th July. Free, registration required.
For more information, click here.
As the V&A’s Jameel Gallery, which houses the museum’s permanent exhibition of Islamic art, turns twenty, this event will take a moment to reflect on the status of Islamic art in museums. A series of four different panels present specialists from different fields who will add their thoughts at this symbolic moment on the past decades and the future of Islamic art in the museum.
Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York.
12th June 2026 – 28th February 2027. Included in standard entry ticket.
For more information, click here.
This exhibition tells the story of how Islamic works of art made their way to European dealers, collectors, international expositions, and museums, introducing a new visual language to artists, architects, and designers. It is the first exhibition at The Met to explore Orientalism as its central focus, presenting not only easel paintings but also drawings, photographs, illustrated books, architecture, arms and armor, textiles, garments, glassware, ceramics, and metalwork.
