Over the past decade, municipality-led beautification programs aimed at rejuvenating cityscapes through new public art installations have dramatically refashioned Iran’s urban landscape. Beginning almost immediately after the 1978-79 Revolution, the newly-established government sought to erase or subvert the symbols and public displays of the old regime and replace them with a new visual vocabulary situated within the grand narrative of the Islamic Republic. The development of Iran’s visual repertoire has become a popular example of state-sanctioned urban beautification, documented by scholars, filmmakers, and photographers alike. Many of these studies, however, do not elucidate the complex web of socio-political relations that are involved in the creation of such images. A capital-centric focus assumes that Tehran is representative of all of Iran and “the state” is responsible for all the processes of production of public art. By viewing public art in Tehran as a direct by-product of a single body, these discussions presume that there exists a centralized, top-down structure responsible for refashioning urban space through art. On the morning of June 5th, 2011, commuters in the city of Mashhad were shocked to find that a municipality-commissioned Shahnameh mural had been erased with white paint the night before. After several days of confusion, speculation, and public outcry fueled by local newspapers covering the erasure, it was revealed that Astan-e Qods-e Razavi, a semi-autonomous administrative organization and charitable endowment that manages the Imam Reza Shrine complex and other important waqf holdings, was behind the removal of the mural. What prompted the charitable foundation (bonyad) to erase the mural? The presence of two significant burial sites—that of Hakim Abdul-Qasem Ferdowsi and the 8th Imam of Shia Islam inform two distinct (but not necessarily opposing) visual narratives that have been subsumed under contemporary political discourse in the city. Through the utilization of a provincial perspective espoused by Setrag Manoukian, this presentation will demonstrate how various geographic, economic, and legal landscapes unique to the city of Mashhad affect the production and editing of public art. Similarly, local political actors like the including the Municipality, Astan-e Qods, the Friday Prayer Leader, and the Revolutionary Guards have all participated in the negotiation of public space, demonstrating that the various intuitions of power vie with one another in their visions of an ideal urban aesthetic.