Roxane / Sukie
Roxane, Freshman Register, 1971
Sukie in London 1975
Roxane at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 2016, standing in front of the Derain painting she'd help to restore in the 1970s
Roxane, Deputy Lord Lieutenant of London, on Remembrance Day 2021
Sukie in a Belgian garden, 2007
Roxane Zand talks to Sukie Taylor Amory about the remarkable twists and turns in her life, from being one of the very first Iranians to attend Harvard-Radcliffe to being the first Iranian appointed by the Queen to serve as a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of England, an honor established by, truly, Henry VIII.
Sukie, from the South Side of Chicago, and Roxane, from Tehran, were sixteen-year-old freshmen when they crossed paths in the Comstock Dining Hall, but it wasn’t until fifty years later, reconnecting in a random Zoom ‘room’ at the 45th reunion, that they discovered how many passions they share—for art and culture and gardens.
Roxanne, now living in London, had just published Geometry and Art in the Modern Middle East, after stepping down from her post as Deputy Chairman at Sotheby’s for Middle Eastern Art and co-curating a celebration of fifty years of the arts in the United Arab Emirates. Sukie, now a garden designer in Duxbury, MA, where she shares a studio with her architect husband David, also class of 1975, had over the years begun to recognize that her designs for clients were inspired by the enduring form of enclosed ‘Chahar Bagh’ gardens that originate in ancient Persia—and especially Shiraz, city of roses and nightingales, where Roxane’s family has deep roots.
These reunited classmates agree: Gardens and Art Without Borders.
Final fun fact: Roxane and Kevin Ward were elementary school classmates in Tehran. Here he talks with Joy Horowitz about the influence of his Iranian childhood on his love of poetry.