What next for culture after a seismic year?

The year began with Iran and the West tentatively resuming cultural relations after the nuclear deal brokered by US President Barack Obama; the Belgian artist Wim Delvoye was quick to make a splash in Tehran with a solo show. It ended with works of Modern art from Tehran due to arrive in Berlin as we went to press. But the possibility that the works by Pollock, Rothko and Bacon, among others, bought before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, would one day come to Washington, DC, receded with the electi