Advancing the Heritage of Armenians in Jewellery
Lost Treasures of Armenia AJF & St-Petersburg’s Ethnographic Museum Develop Strategic Partnership
AJF's collaboration with the St‐Petersburg Ethnography Museum, spearheaded by AJF regional director Aza Babayan, is in full swing.
Thanks to the initiative undertaken by AJA President and AJF Board of Trustees Treasurer Mr. Gagik Gevorkyan, AJF partnered with this world‐renowned museum to publish the A. A. Miller collection of Armenian treasures for the first time.
With AJF's support, a major effort is now underway to publish a coffee‐table book featuring these artifacts, and substantiating their significance for the first time.
Renowned curator and Senior Researcher at the Museum's Department of Ethnography of the Nations of the Caucasus, Central Asia and Kazakhstan, Dr. Lusine Ghushyan is already editing the publication in collaboration with other eminent art historians.
Thanks to joint efforts with AJF, professional photographs have also been taken and prepared for publication. AJF is already in talks with other strategic partners to complement its efforts, as well as administrate technical and logistical matters in order to publish this museum catalogue by the end of October 2014. AJF is concurrently planning a series of events to launch this exclusive publication, and promote the museum exhibits from the Miller collection in 2015 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
A special presentation on this AJF initiative will be made at the upcoming AJA event in Basel, to which all are invited to attend. Russian professorAlexander Millertravelled to historic Armenia during the genocide in 1916 with the aim of salvaging a piece of history. He collected 225 artifacts that include jewellery, costumes, and embroidery from Van, Mush, and Bitlis. For more than 95 years,the collection was stored away and only recently came to light.