Synchronicity

Chris Bohjalian at the Serj Tankian exhibition

By Chris Bohjalian, 12 March 2026

One of my favorite museums in the world exists just outside of Boston, in Watertown, Massachusetts: the Armenian Museum of America. I was there again this past weekend. If you are anywhere near Boston, it's worth a visit anytime, but the next six weeks will make your visit especially memorable.

Here's why.

Many of you know Serj Tankian as the lead singer behind System of a Down, the magnificent Armenian-American heavy metal rock band, which has been crushing it in concerts and on the album charts for three decades. (Their songs, "Chop Suey!" and "Toxicity" are among my favorites, and staples on my high-energy playlist when I'm riding my bike and need some high-octane fuel for my legs.) And, yes, there are some in the Armenian community who disagree with his politics. But he is still one hell of a great musician and, we are discovering, a brilliant painter.

Likewise, many of you know Arshile Gorky as a 20th-century abstract expressionist, the master behind such canvases as "The Artist and His Mother." Gorky survived the Armenian Genocide, but hanged himself in Connecticut at the age of 44 - succumbing to a lifetime of tragedy. Genocide was merely the first act in a personal history that would include his mother's starvation in 1919, multiple heartbreaks, the loss of many of his important paintings in a fire, and (finally) cancer.

Both Tankian and Gorky have cameos in my novel, The Sandcastle Girls, a love story set amidst the Armenian Genocide. It is also a fictional photo exhibit at the Armenian Museum of America that sets in motion the narrator's search for her family history in the novel.

The idea that these two Armenian artists have a show together right now is the sort of synchronicity that reminds us the world may be spinning toward chaos and entropy, but once in a while even the toast falls butter side up.

The works by these artists are wildly different. Gorky, though originally from the northeastern corner of the Ottoman Empire, lived in Watertown when he first emigrated to the United States, and the works on display - some unveiled publicly for the first time - have the feel of a local boy's homecoming. (One museum wall backdrop is a great black and white photo of Gorky painting in the "two-decker" he lived in on Dexter Avenue in Watertown, painting in the yard.) There are drawings of friends on restaurant doilies, lavender Christmas cards he created, and a few remarkable graphite pencil drawings. There are also some of his magnificent oil paintings, including a deeply affecting self portrait in which his eyes alone convey that he has seen things no young person should have to witness. For Armenians, what might be most haunting is the sketch on loan from the Whitney, "The Artist's Mother," in which we can see an early stage of what might be his most famous painting.

The exhibit was curated by Kim Theriault, who's written extensively about the painter. Jason Sohigian, the museum's Executive Director, told me this was the first Gorky show at an Armenian museum anywhere in the world. It will be in Watertown through April 26,

Tankian's paintings, some thirteen years old and some unveiled here for the first time, are bold, phantasmagoric abstracts, the large canvases thick with color. Sometimes you will be reminded of Pollock ("We Will Not Disappear," from 2023), and other times of Dali ("Grieving Banner," from 2013). Among the many elements to this show that makes it extraordinary is the music that Tankian composed to accompany each painting. The museum offers an app you can download to your phone; then you can listen to the music as you contemplate each painting. It's immersive, yes, but it also leads you to internalize each canvas in unexpected ways.

This exhibit was curated by Ryann Casey, an artist, photographer, and gallerist herself. It will be at the museum through May 10.

Now, I have not written this as an art critic. I'm not. But as Stella Adler said, "Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one."

So, I am writing this as someone who loves a particular museum and discovered there two remarkable shows that moved me - as a person of a certain age and, yes, as an Armenian-American. I am never more proud of my heritage than when surrounded by brilliant Armenian artists and thinkers.

https://chrisbohjalian.substack.com/p/synchronicity