“Manuscript of Armenian history still being written”, “Reverent Beauty”, “One For the Ages” – New York Times on Met’s Armenia! show

American art critic Jason Farago has published an article in The New York Times about the Armenia! exhibition currently on display at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The headline of the article is “Reverent Beauty: The Met’s Armenia Show Is One for the Ages”.

Below are parts from the original article, as published in the New York Times.

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art gives the blockbuster treatment to Armenia, the oldest Christian country in the world”, it said.

“Armenia is a country with so much history it can overwhelm you. This spring we learned its future might be as eventful as its past, which makes it a timely moment for “Armenia!,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s eye-opening appraisal of the art, manuscripts, textiles and religious artifacts of a nation that is still adding surprising chapters to its dramatic history”.

Farago mentions that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Catholicos Garegin II attended the opening of the exhibition.

“The country was the first to make Christianity its official religion, and this exhibition, packed with weighty stone crosses and richly illuminated gospels, is a testament to the centrality of the church to Armenian cultural identity. No museum has ever mounted such a large exhibition of Armenian art, and most of the 140 objects here come from museum collections and churches in Armenia and rarely travel.

Armenia!” has been organized by Helen C. Evans, the Met’s curator of Byzantine art, and focuses specifically on the art and history of the country’s medieval period. It is not, despite the exclamation point in its title, an exhibition that favors razzle-dazzle. In fact, “Armenia!” is a rather bookish sort of blockbuster, concentrating heavily on illuminated manuscripts, and presented in low lighting to protect the gospels and romances on view. There is some ecclesiastical flash, in the form of bejeweled crucifixes and gold-plated censers, but this is primarily an exhibition of book illustration, unlike any other medieval manuscript show you’re likely to see”.

“There’s more than manuscripts. Beautifully woven vestments and altar frontals affirm that Armenian believers saw as much beauty in services as in the scriptoria. Reliquaries in the form of St. Gregory’s right arm were popular, and one silver, gem-studded specimen here is said to contain the remains of his last known male descendant. Gold earrings with dangling pendants shaped like crescent moons and birds, dating to the 11th century, are a rare example of secular material here, and their filigreed panels reflect the influence of neighboring Iran.

Perhaps the most distinctive artworks of the Armenian Middle Ages are the khachkars, or cross-stones, found across the Southern Caucasus.”

The article stretches far beyond arts, and the author also mentions the Armenian “Velvet Revolution” that took place in spring 2018.

Mentioning that throughout history Armenians have many times been impacted by outside forces, Farago concludes the article by saying: “But the young revolutionaries who marched and sang in Yerevan this spring — such a rare gleam of hope in this global age of authoritarianism — knew that the manuscript of Armenian history is still being written.”