Getty Museum Plans Lecture on Art and Cultural Heritage in Genocide
Canon Table Page (detail), 1256, T’oros Roslin (Armenian, active 1256–1268), illuminator. Tempera and gold paint. Leaf: 26.5 × 19 cm (10 7/16 × 7 1/2 in.). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 59, fol. 5v, 94.MB.71.4.5.verso. Gift of the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia
The lecture will be held at the Museum’s Lecture Hall. It is included with free museum admission, which must be booked in advance. Please note there is a fee for parking.
This event will be livestreamed on the GRI YouTube channel.
Here is a summary of the lecture as reported by Getty: “As scholars of genocide have shown, the genocidal process extends beyond the physical extinction of the targeted community to include the erasure, appropriation, or transfer of the community’s cultural assets. During the Armenian Genocide and its aftermath, sites associated with Armenian culture, particularly religious sites, were destroyed, repurposed, appropriated, sold, or transferred. Some became cultural heritage sites sundered from their connection to any remaining Armenian communities, while certain sacred objects were looted or relocated to museums far from the Armenian homeland. These sites and objects eventually acquire a “second life as heritage” and as works of art. This lecture considers the implications of genocide with the processes of making sites into patrimony and objects into museum pieces. It reflects on extinction and transformation into art and what this portends for art history and museums in the 21st century.”
