Arts & Culture special pullout section - Armenian Reporter

The Armenian Reporter | November 14, 2009
Commentary
C15
Editorial
Notebook
A center of excellence, with a smile
by Vincent Lima
YEREVAN – Over the past few weeks,
my colleagues and I have been writing a
lot about various aspects of the Cafesjian
Center for the Arts, which had its
Grand Opening on November 7–8: we’ve
written about the sculpture garden, the
Arshile Gorky exhibit, the glasswork by
Libenský Brychtová, the Grigor Khanjyan
mural, the photographs by Pattie
Boyd, and more. Each element has its
own story and is impressive on its own.
Now it may be time to step back and look
at the bigger picture.
As I step back, I find myself overwhelmed.
The scale of the gift Gerry
Cafesjian has given the City of Yerevan
and the Republic of Armenia is difficult
to fathom.
I have to ask myself: Am I reacting the
way I am just because he’s my boss? No. I
remember the tears that came to my eyes
exactly a year ago, when I covered the
opening of the new, state-of-the-art building
of the American University of Armenia.
I wrote at length about it at the time.
What makes such gifts, and specifically
this gift by Mr. Cafesjian, special
is the scale of the vision behind the
generosity.
The Cat
For many people in Yerevan, it all began
with the Cat.
Of course, it really began with renovations:
the Cascade, at the heart of Yerevan,
connects the city center to the elevated
residential neighborhoods of the
north. The escalators, the escalator shaft,
and the garden were all in sad shape,
and the Cafesjian Museum Foundation,
formed in 2002 as a public-private partnership,
fixed them. Everyone had reason
to be grateful. Then the Cat arrived.
What was this giant bronze sculpture
that had suddenly appeared in the center
of the city? Some skeptics raised their
eyebrows: a black cat? a statue with its
tongue sticking out? But the people
took to it, and very quickly Fernando
Botero’s Cat became a beloved landmark
and attraction in Yerevan.
I moved to Yerevan in May 2006. The
first morning in our new home, my elder
daughter and I looked out the window
of her room on the ninth floor and
stared in awe at Mount Ararat. Then I
said, “Hey, let’s go downstairs, I want to
show you the cat I was telling you about.”
And of course she loved it.
A commentator in one of the local papers
wrote this week that the cat had
sent the message to Yerevan that a statue
does not have to be an ode, a heroic
representation of an admired person.
And Yerevan appreciated that message,
the commentator added. She had a point,
though I would note that not all Armenian
sculptures have been of the heroic
variety. Ervand Kochar, the talented author
of the most heroic statues in the
city, Sasunts Davit and Vartan Mamikonian,
also sculpted original representations
of modern man – gnarled men with
vacuous eyes and an urban landscape in
their guts. That said, I agree that the Cat
is in dialogue with the statues in the rest
of the city. I think its message is this:
Lighten up! Art can be fun.
Soon the cat had neighbors. Barry Flanagan’s
jaunty hares, Lynn Chadwick’s
gorgeous and geometric representations
of the human figure, Paul Cox’s
colorful 2005 creation, Ahoy, among
others. And they were all out there in
the open, part of the new fabric of a city
that was being transformed.
Cultural programs
The sculptures were only part of the story.
Less than a week after I first showed my
daughter the Cat, it was June 1, International
Children’s Day. Tamanyan Park was
absolutely full of children from Yerevan
and beyond, having fun, enjoying the cultural
programming and entertainment offered
by the foundation and its partners.
We were all so happy to be living here.
Every other week that summer, we
could go to Tamanyan Park and take in
a concert or other open-air performance
organized by the foundation. Some of
the concerts featured local artists; others
headlined performers from abroad. The
summer evenings of tens of thousands
of Yerevantsis and their guests were enhanced
by this free programming.
With this programming, the museum
had started yet another dialogue with
the city: museums need not simply be
exhibition spaces; they can offer cultural
programs, it said. I was pleased
to notice the next year, the Hovhannes
Toumanyan Museum started offering an
outdoor public event for children every
year on the great writer’s birthday.
So the Cafesjian Museum Foundation
has been a significant part of the cultural
life of Yerevan for some years now.
And in these bite-sized pieces, it was
fairly easy to appreciate the gift, which
changed Armenia in little, subtle ways.
Lighten up!
Now, with the completion of this phase
and the Grand Opening, the scale of the
gift has become apparent. It is more
than the sum of its impressive parts. It is
transformative.
Decorating the white stone façade
are fragrant formal gardens with tens
of thousands of plantings. Hidden
behind them is gallery after gallery
of works on display. Like the Cat that
heralded their arrival a few years ago,
many of the works say, Lighten up; art
can be fun.
You want cultural programming? You
have the chief art critic of the New York
Times, no less, and he’s not just a big
name. He’s an interesting and charming
man who – like the Cafesjian Center for
the Arts – rejects the notion that art is a
highbrow affair that regular people can’t
appreciate. He was the right choice to
deliver a talk on opening day.
Here you have abstract glasswork by
Libenský Brychtová. Is it an acquired
taste? Some of us take our time trying
to come to grips with it, looking
at Libenský’s sketches, contemplating
the techniques and stories behind
the various pieces, growing to appreciate
the work. Meanwhile, the hall
has many children in it on opening
day, and they simply love it: they are
looking at the prism of the 3V column,
exploring the play of light and color
in Horizon, and the play of light and
shades of gray in Space T.
The Beatles were a phenomenon that
captured the imagination of Armenians
living behind the Iron Curtain, and it
was great fun to have Cynthia Lennon
Fernando Botero’s Cat is
already a Yerevan landmark.
Photo: Grigor Hakobyan/
Armenian Reporter.
and Pattie Boyd here on opening day.
And if the two women were to meet
again for the first time in decades, why
should it not be in Yerevan?
A center of excellence
Armenia has always displayed its arts
– from stone crosses, church architecture,
and needlework to the canvases of
Saryan, the compositions of Khachaturian,
the sculptures of Kochar, and the
gracious dances of Nayirian girls – with
deserved pride. Now, for the first time,
it can show the Armenian giant Arshile
Gorky as well. But an international city
has to show more than just its native
sons and daughters. With the reborn
Cascade, Yerevan can start thinking of
itself as more of an international artistic
center of excellence.
As the physical space for artistic, cultural,
and educational programming is
expanded, and other patrons of the arts
join in to house their collections at the
center, Yerevan will more and more become
such a place.
And why not? It already has a firstclass
airport, a welcoming and hospitable
people who greet you with a smile,
excellent hotels, restaurants, and tourist
agencies, and more.
The Cafesjian Center for the Arts, in
short, provides Armenian students, artists,
and the public at large with a resource
hitherto unavailable locally; it invites
us to have fun; it allows Yerevan to
present itself as a center of excellence in
the arts. And it does one more thing. It
announces that the diaspora and Armenia,
together, can accomplish anything.
And that’s really encouraging. f