Monuments of the Nakhichevan Region
Featuring:
Argam Ayvazian
Author of The Historical Monuments of Nakhichevan
Steven Sim
Architect and Art Historian
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The Nakhichevan region, located in what is today Azerbaijan, part of the ancient Armenian historic lands and with an uninterrupted Armenian presence down to recent times, is the site of thousands of endangered and destroyed Armenian monuments. Argam Ayvazian has assembled a photo exhibit on the monuments of Nakhichevan that was open to the public on November 2 at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. In his presentation at NAASR, he shows digital images and offer comments in Armenian (with simultaneous translation into English).
Ayvazian was born in the village of Arinj in Nakhichevan and has devoted his adult life to documenting and analyzing the historical monuments of the region. He has served on the Commission for Preservation of Ancient Monuments in Armenia and is the author of numerous books on the subject, including The Historical Monuments of Nakhichevan (1990), translated into English by Fr. Krikor Maksoudian. Currently, he serves as Deputy Director, Agency on Protection of Historical and Cultural Environment at the Armenian Ministry of Culture.
Ayvazian is joined by Glasgow-based architect and art historian Steven Sim. Sim served as co-author in 2006 (with Ayvazian, Lucy Der Manuelian, and Patrick Donabedian) of The Destruction of Jugha and the Entire Armenian Cultural Heritage in Nakhijevan, a report submitted to UNESCO. He was one of the last Westerners to see the hundreds of Jugha khachkars destroyed by the Azeri military in 2005. Sim has traveled throughout historic Armenia for the past two decades documenting thousands of vanishing and at-risk monuments.
This event took place with the cooperation of Dr. Anahit Ter Stepanian of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT, and Dr. James R. Russell, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University. Dr. Russell served as chair for the evening and Dr. Ter Stepanian provided translation; both participated in the evening's discussions.
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November 1, 2007
NAASR Headquarters
395 Concord Avenue
Belmont, MA
Presented by:
The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)