TEHRAN – Mohammad-Mehdi Dadman was inaugurated as the new director of the Art Bureau during a ceremony on Sunday.

The Art Bureau is affiliated with the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization (IIDO), a major organization that promotes Islamic culture and art under the auspices of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

Dadman was the former deputy director of the IIDO.

A number of art and cultural officials, including Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Seyyed Abbas Salehi and Academy of Persian Language and Literature director Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, attended the ceremony.

Speaking at the ceremony, the minister talked about the role of the bureau in preserving the achievements of the Iran-Iraq 1980-1988 war, which is called the Sacred Defense in Iran. 

“The Sacred Defense is our Iranian treasure and does not match any part of the history. It is a treasure which requires a deep excavation,” he said.

“The bureau has been active in publishing books with the central themes of the Sacred Defense and Islamic Revolution, while many books have been translated by the organization,” the minister said.

The bureau also developed the poetry of Sacred Defense, and poets like Qeisar Aminpur, Hamid Sabzevari and Seyyed Hassan Hosseini were active members of the bureau, while it also helped produce many films on the Sacred Defense,” he added. 

Haddad-Adel for his part pointed to the motto “Surge in Production” by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and said, “We need to take necessary measures for the realization of the motto in the field of art productions. We should provide the necessary artistic products for people from all walks of life.”

He added, “Seminaries can step in and help the bureau end the problems of art. The bureau should take steps and produce illustrious artworks.”
 
The 32-year-old Dadman is a graduate of industrial engineering from Sharif University of Technology. He is currently a student at the Meshkat Islamic Sciences Seminary.

He is the son of Rahman Dadman, who served as the minister of roads and transportation under president Mohammad Khatami from January 14, 2001 until May 18, 2001 when he died in an air crash.

Dadman replaced Mohsen Momeni-Sharif who held the position from May 2010. 

Photo: The new director of the Art Bureau, Mohammad-Mehdi Dadman (L), receives his decree from Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Sadeqi-Rashad, the director of the Islamic Thought and Culture Research Center, during his inauguration in Tehran on June 28, 2020. (Mehr/Hamid Vakili) 

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