Membership Supports Our Mission to Share Armenia’s History & Culture with the World

Dear Friend,

Greetings from the Armenian Museum of America. During this challenging time, we stand with Armenia in the face of ongoing aggression. Our thoughts are with the people of Artsakh. We must take action to support Armenia and Artsakh and sometimes that starts by learning more.

In our galleries you can view the NFL Artsakh Cleats (click here) and Ara Oshagan’s larger-than-life Shushi Portraits, while our online exhibition dedicated to the Armenian heritage of Artsakh includes 50 artifacts that are safeguarded in museum collections around the world (click here).

Our exhibitions and programming are growing by the day and we are welcoming more people to the museum than ever before. The galleries--with a mix of contemporary, medieval, and ancient art--are on par with the country’s top museums. We have become a destination in Boston for Armenian and non-Armenian visitors. A few highlights:

• Youth visits have blossomed, and we are hosting hundreds of kids from private and public schools.

• We opened a major new exhibit "Ara Oshagan: Disrupted, Borders" in our contemporary art gallery.

• Our online programming is bringing our collection to members across the country and beyond.

We have expanded our cooperation with the Matenadaran. Bank of America selected us as one of 23 cultural institutions across America for its Art Conservation Project. This grant supports our work with conservators from Yerevan who will restore 21 rare, illuminated manuscripts in our collection, the oldest of which dates to the 13th century.

Membership is at an all-time high, but we count on your support to continue this growth. Being a part of the Museum offers a range of benefits:

• Free admission to our galleries

• Discounts of 10% to 25% in our Gift Shop and online

• Invitations to Members Only events such as our annual Christmas Reception and Gallery Stroll in December

Your membership supports our Mission to share Armenia’s history and culture with the world. I hope you will respond today and be a part of this success story in our community.

Respectfully yours,
Jason Sohigian
Executive Director

PS: If you received our membership letter in the mail, please keep in mind that it was sent to print before the attacks on Artsakh restarted in September. Our thoughts are with our fellow Armenians who have been killed, injured, or displaced, and our work takes on a renewed importance in the face of Genocide and cultural erasure.

Panel Discussion Coverage from 'Ara Oshagan, Disrupted, Borders'

We hosted a panel to discuss Ara Oshagan's exhibition, Disrupted, Borders. Panelists included art critic Hrag Vartanian of Hyperallergic and Prof. Christina Maranci, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard, moderated by Ryann Casey.

The event was well attended and included insights into the current situation in Artsakh since Oshagan's larger-than-life Shushi Portraits are a key element of this show in our contemporary gallery.

Artist Panel at Armenian Museum to Feature Harvard’s Christina Maranci & Hrag Vartanian of Hyperallergic

The Armenian Museum of America is offering a series of events on September 23-24 including a panel discussion on “The Image as Disruption and Identity” with artist Ara Oshagan, curator Ryann Casey, art critic Hrag Vartanian, and Prof. Christina Maranci of Harvard University.

- Special Weekend of Programs to Include Free Admission and Member Tours -

The Armenian Museum of America will host a series of programs the weekend of September 23-24 highlighted by an artist panel discussing Ara Oshagan’s “Disrupted, Borders” exhibition currently showing in the Museum’s contemporary galleries.

The event will bring Oshagan together with curator Ryann Casey, art critic Hrag Vartanian, and Professor Christina Maranci, all of whom touch upon contemporary art and politics in their respective work.

The panel, titled “The Image as Disruption and Identity,” is free and open to the public, and will take place in the Adele and Haig Der Manuelian Galleries on Saturday, September 23 at 2:00 pm, followed by a light reception. The Museum is also offering free admission for all visitors that weekend, along with free guided tours of “Ara Oshagan: Disrupted, Borders” to its members.

“This show connects many of the diasporic and homeland entanglements that have occupied me over the past decade or more, from Los Angeles to Beirut to Artsakh,” states Oshagan. With more than 55 works on display, “Ara Oshagan: Disrupted, Borders” combines photography, collage, installation, and film.

“The panel will concentrate on the role that image-making plays in our understanding of diasporic identity, displacement, and our collective history,” Oshagan explains. “Of particular interest is the use of historical objects and family archives in the conversation around dislocation, borders, and (un)imagined futures.”

About the Panelists

Ara Oshagan is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator, and cultural worker whose practice explores collective and personal histories of dispossession, legacies of violence, and identity. He works in photography, film, collage, installation, and public art. Oshagan is an artist-in-residence at 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica and curator at ReflectSpace Gallery in Glendale.

Ryann Casey curated “Disrupted, Borders" and is a New Jersey based artist and educator. She is an adjunct Professor of Photography, Art History and Critical Theory at Stockton University, and her current photographic and curatorial projects focus on themes of loss, trauma, and memory. Casey has curated a number of exhibitions surrounding Armenian artists and history.

Dr. Christina Maranci is one of the world’s foremost experts on Armenian architecture. The first woman and first person of Armenian descent to serve as Harvard University’s Mashtots Chair of Armenian Studies, Dr. Maranci’s research focuses on at-risk Armenian churches and monasteries. She is also one of the Armenian Museum’s esteemed academic advisors.

An artist, curator, and critic, Hrag Vartanian has written widely on Armenian artists and cultural production for over two decades. After co-founding Hyperallergic in 2009, Vartanian has served as the arts magazine’s editor-in-chief ever since. His writings have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, and NPR.

More Weekend Offerings

Museum admission will be free for all visitors on September 23-24, sponsored by the Alan K. and Isabelle DerKazarian Foundation. “We’ve participated in Smithsonian’s free Museum Day program the past few years,” says Executive Director Jason Sohigian. “So when it was cancelled this year, we decided in partnership with the Alan K. and Isabelle DerKazarian Foundation to offer free admission on the same weekend as Watertown’s Faire on the Square celebration, and show the Museum’s connection to the community.”

“In addition to the panel discussion and free admission, we are offering a special benefit to Members of the Armenian Museum. The artist Ara Oshagan and curator Ryann Casey will offer free tours of the exhibition exclusively for Members on September 23 at 11:00 am and on September 24 at 12:00 noon,” adds Sohigian. “We hope everyone will take advantage of these offerings as we kick off our fall programming.”

This artist panel and “Disrupted, Borders” have been generously sponsored by Michele M. Kolligian in memory of Haig Der Manuelian for his dedication and foresight in sharing Armenia’s rich history and culture with the world, including an impressive collection of manuscripts that he gifted to the Armenian Museum.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Displays Marash Textile

Detail from Marash embroidery at MFA, Boston

We are very proud of this cooperation with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: This large textile, which may have been a hanging or a tablecloth, bears horizontal rows of embroidered flowers. This piece was made using one of the stitches particular to the city of Marash. Marash was well-known in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for its Armenian population and their industries including weaving and embroidery.

The date of its acquisition, 1923, requires us to consider this object with particular care and concern. The Armenians of Marash experienced tragedy at the turn of the 20th century, not once, but twice. During the Armenian Genocide the community was targeted by the Ottoman Empire. There was widespread ethnic cleansing resulting in the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians living in the Armenian Highland. In 1920, when the city was under control of the French army after World War I, the Turkish army attacked to reclaim the territory and the Armenians of Marash were targeted once more.

Three years later this textile made its way into the MFA’s collection. “We display this hanging as an expression of our commitment to researching Armenian objects at the MFA, to acknowledging the Armenian Genocide, and to honor the will of the Armenian people to survive.”

This label was written with the support of the Armenian Museum of America (Watertown, MA). Gift of Denman Waldo Ross (1853-1935), Cambridge, to the MFA. (Accession Date: November 1, 1923).

Exhibit Featuring Saroyan Artworks Opens at Armenian Museum Following Donation from Joan Agajanian Quinn

Following the donation of Ruben Amirian’s “Homage to Mesrop Mashtots,” a 14-foot composite work celebrating the Armenian alphabet, art collector and Museum Trustee Joan Agajanian Quinn has gifted two watercolors by literary genius William Saroyan and two drawings from his son Aram Saroyan to the Armenian Museum of America. All five works are now on display in the new exhibit “My Name Is Saroyan,” inspired by Armenian literary culture both past and present.

“After the success of our 2022 exhibition ‘On the Edge: Los Angeles Art 1970s-1990s from the Joan and Jack Quinn Family Collection’ at the Armenian Museum, the Quinn family is happy to broaden the Museum’s collection of contemporary artists with these donations,” explains Quinn. “We continue to be impressed with the way the Museum displays Armenian art which spans the time frame from ancient to modern times. The contemporary exhibits on the third floor have been professionally and artistically compared to the top museums in the country.”

Quinn is the co-host of “Beverly Hills View” and has been the producer and host of the “Joan Quinn Profiles” for more than 35 years. The Los Angeles native was West Coast Editor of Andy Warhol’s “Interview,” Society Editor of the “Los Angeles Herald Examiner,” and the founding West Coast Editor of “Condé Nast Traveler.”

The Quinns have loaned art to museums all over the world, including the Louvre, MoMA, LACMA, Museum of Arts and Design, Bakersfield Museum of Art, Fresno Art Museum, Hammer Museum, and the Huntington Art Museum. Part of the extensive Quinn family collection was loaned to the Armenian Museum for the exhibits “On the Edge” and “Discovering Takouhi: Portraits of Joan Agajanian Quinn,” which showcases contemporary Armenian artists.

“There’s a long tradition of contemporary exhibitions here at the Armenian Museum and the last few shows have taken things to new heights,” says Executive Director Jason Sohigian. “’On the Edge’ was very well received, and we opened a new exhibition, ‘Ara Oshagan: Disrupted, Borders,’ that fits perfectly with our permanent collection, from manuscripts to diaspora and cultural identity, and even Artsakh with the installation of the ‘Shushi Portraits’ series. On top of this, the new exhibition of four Saroyan works adds more excitement to the Adele and Haig Der Manuelian Galleries.”

One of the most prominent American-Armenian literary figures of the 20th century, William Saroyan also wrote music and painted throughout his life. Visual works from his later years, like the watercolors currently on display in “My Name Is Saroyan,” have been compared to the Abstract Expressionism made famous through figures like Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, and Adolph Gottlieb. The Pulitzer Prize winning author has artworks in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Weisman Art Museum of Minneapolis, among others.

Earlier this month, the Armenian Museum’s Sound Archive released a rare and previously unknown recording of William Saroyan singing at the home of the writer Hamasdegh in 1939. Click here to listen to this seven minute recording, digitized and restored from a lacquer disc which captures a spirited moment between some of the most prominent Armenian-American literary figures of the time.

Succinct and provocative, Aram Saroyan’s brand of minimalism is reflected in a range of media, including his two Uchida marker drawings displayed in “My Name Is Saroyan.” The son of William Saroyan, Aram is an artist, poet, novelist, memoirist, and playwright, having made his debut with six poems and a book review in the 1964 issue of “Poetry.” He became famous for his one-word or “minimal” poems, a form he developed in the 1960s that is often linked to Concrete poetry. Saroyan’s honors include the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He resides in Los Angeles.

Ruben Amirian’s “Homage to Mesrop Mashtots,” (click here to read about this donation by Joan Agajanian Quinn) currently exhibited alongside William and Aram Saroyan at the Armenian Museum, contains 38 canvases representing the letters of the Armenian alphabet. Each canvas is 12 by 16 inches. Assembled altogether, the series extends to an impressive 14 feet wide by four feet high.