TEHRAN – The director of the Music Museum of Iran, Ali Moradkhani, died of COVID-19 at Tehran’s Khatam Ul-Anbia Hospital on Monday. He was 63.

Earlier on Sunday, Iran House of Music managing director Hamidreza Nurbakhsh announced that Moradkhani had gone into a coma in his struggle with the effects of the virus.

Moradkhani was the director of the Music Center before he was appointed as the deputy culture minister for artistic affairs in 2013 when Ali Jannati took the helm of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in Hassan Rouhani’s first administration. 

In December 2017, Moradkhani was replaced with Mojtaba Hosseini by the new culture minister, Seyyed Abbas Salehi, following some changes made within the ministry to lessen pressure from certain people who had been critical of the organization for its more tolerant policies.

In a message published on Monday, Salehi expressed his condolence over the death of Moradkhani.

“His long career in cultural management and his creative, constructive and systematic actions in this field had changed him into an efficient manager for artists and cultural figures,” he said in the message.     

Photo: Director of the Music Museum of Iran, Ali Moradkhani, in an undated photo. (Mehr/Mohammad Khodabakhsh)
  
MMS/YAW