In the In Times Past column, David W. Dunlap explores New York Times history through artifacts housed in the Museum at The Times.
Though he has been dead 45 years, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran — an autocratic monarch whose ascent and downfall were closely tied to the United States — hovers like a ghost over the fraught relationship between the two countries.
He also hovers over the 15th-floor boardroom of The New York Times. An autographed color photo of the shah from 1977, framed in finely tooled silver, keeps company with 30 other portraits of leading world and national figures, saints and sinners, liberators and oppressors.
No endorsement is intended of anyone whose likeness is displayed in the boardroom, down the corridor from the Museum at The Times. They simply represent a small sampling of notable people who have had some relation with The Times or with members of the Ochs-Sulzberger family, which has controlled The Times since 1896.
The boardroom gallery includes four military leaders, four entertainers, two aviators, two industrialists and one Dalai Lama. The shah is among 12 heads of state or heads of government. Almost all the frames are made of wood. Only two portraits were presented to The Times in silver frames: those of the shah, who was deposed in 1979, and of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, who was assassinated in 1981.
David W. Dunlap, a retired Times reporter and columnist, is the curator of the Museum at The Times, which houses Times artifacts and historical documents.
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