Professor Kouymjian’s Sabbatical Leave Activities

University lectures, international conferences, art exhibits and book writing have dominated the first months of the sabbatical leave of Dr. Dickran Kouymjian, Haig & Isabel Berberian Endowed Professor of Armenian Studies and Director of the Armenian Studies Program.

In April and May Prof. Kouymjian was invited on two different occasions to Belgium. In April he served on the jury of Belgium’s prestigious Francqui Fund award, given annually to the country’s single outstanding scholar. The meetings took place in Brussels with a jury of non-Belgian scholars including two American other than Dr. Kouymjian, three from England, two each from France and Germany, and single scholars from the Netherlands, Sweden and Taiwan. The award is for one million Belgian francs and is the only Belgian prize given annual by the king himself. This year’s winner was Prof. Philippe Van Parijs, a specialist in political philosophy at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve.

In May and June Prof. Kouymjian was invited by Professor Bernard Coulie, Director of the Oriental Institute of the Catholic University of Louvain at Louvain-la-Neuve, to present a series of six seminars to doctorate students of the Institute on the general subject, “Topics in Armenian History & Art : The Search for an Identity.” Beginning with two sessions on the Armenian genocide of 1915, he explored the question of cultural identity in the diaspora. The other topics were on architecture, codicology, manuscript illumination, and the minor arts. The three-hour seminars were also regularly attended by Louvain faculty.

For several years Prof. Kouymjian has been helping the Catholicosate of Cilicia in Antelias, Lebanon organize a major one week international symposium on Armenian Spiritulaity on the occasion of the 1700th anniversary of the Proclamation of Christianity in Armenia. His Holiness Catholicos Aram I, asked Dr. Kouymjian to coordinate the event with Rev. Fr. Nareg Alemezian. The meeting held from June 25 to a July 1, 2001 brought together a who’s who of scholars, theologians and high church dignitaries in Bossey, Switzerland, just outside of Geneva where the World Council of Churches has its Ecumenical Institute.

The conference was preside over by His Holiness Aram, who not only attended every session and lecture, but had comments and questions on every paper presented during the six days of sessions in the isolated retreat over looking Geneva’s famous Lake. Also attending and presiding at one of the session was His Beatitude Patriarch Mesrop Mutafian of Istanbul. Other senior clergy included Bishop Yeznik of the Armenian Diocese of Russia, Bishop Khajak of Canada, Bishop Kegham of Greece, Fr. Prof. Levon Zekyan of Venice, and representatives of the Armenian Catholic, Armenian Protestant, Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Coptic and several European Protestant churches. Scholars from the Middle East, Europe and the United States were present, among the latter group were Robert Thomson formerly of Harvard now at Oxford, Abraham Terian of the St. Nercess Theological Seminary, Peter Cowe of UCLA, and Michael Connolly of Boston University.

His Holiness Aram asked Prof. Kouymjian to give the keynote address “Sources and Specificity of Armenian Spirituality” at the opening of the conference. The talk presented both an historical perspective for the six-day conference and more importantly a number of important problems facing Armenian Christianity today through a series of questions directed to the church heads gathered at Bossey. Throughout the gathering there were continual references to the questions he posed in his paper.

On the fourth day of the conference, Dr Kouymjian presented a second paper in the section devoted to artistic creation in the church entitled “Armenian Spirituality and the Arts: Architecture, Painting and Liturgical Metalwork.” He presented some of his recent research on St. Gregory and especially on Armenian liturgical vessels.

In August, Dr. Kouymjian went to Geneva for a meeting at the Musée d’art et histoire on the organization of an exhibit on Armenian altar curtains from the collection of Holy Etchmiadzin. The exhibit, originally scheduled as part of the celebration of the 1700th anniversary at the Textile Museum in Lyon, France, but delayed for technical reasons, will open in 2004 at Geneva’s famous Rath Museum.

In early October the professor traveled to Los Angeles for two exhibits, one a major artistic event devoted to the famous fourteenth century Gospels of Glajor (now the property of UCLA) sponsored and held at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the other an exhibit entitled “Modern Icon: Contemporary Artists and the Legacy of the Armenian Illuminated Manuscript,” held at the Brand Library and Art Center in Glendale from September 15 to October 20, 2001, for which he wrote a preface to the exhibit catalogue.

In the meantime, Prof. Kouymjian continues his work on the catalogue of the liturgical treasures of the Armenian Museum at the Catholicosate in Antelias, Lebanon, research on Armenian book bindings, and a major study on the iconography of the Alexander the Great Romance in Armenian manuscript painting.
More of Dr. Kouymjian’s activities will be included in the May issue of Hye Sharzhoom.

Later in the month he traveled to southern Italy, where the University of Lecce organized an international conference entitled “San Gregorio armeno e il suo culto nell’italia meridionale” (Saint Gregory the Armenian and His Cult in Southern Italy). He presented a paper entitled “The Armenian Iconography of St. Gregory the Illuminator,” discussing in detail with the aid of some 60 slides the different ways Gregory was depicted in Armenian art and how we are to interpret the great variety of images. During his stay in the Apulia region he was able to visit other sites devoted to St. Gregory, including the church of St. Gregory in the city of Nardo, where he was allowed to photograph an hitherto unknown right hand relic of St. Gregory the Illuminator pfreserved in the treasury. According to him, there are now four right hand relics of the founder of the Armenian church, on which he is preparing a separate study.

Professor Giusto Traina, one of Italy’s foremost young classical scholars and an authority on early Armenian history and texts, organized the conference. Dr. Kouymjian had invited Traina to participate in the international symposium on the father of Armenian history, Movses of Khoren, that he had organized in Paris ten years ago, the proceedings of which were published last year.

At the end of October, Prof. Kouymjian was invited to present a paper entitled “Art in Exile: Armenian Artists of the Nineteenth & Twentieth Centuries,” in Leiden, The Netherlands, at an international symposium titled “Armenia beyond Territory. The Evolution of the Individual Living in the Diaspora.” The one-day conference held on October 30th was part of the inauguration of three separate exhibits on Armenian art as part of Holland’s celebration of the 1700th anniversary of Armenian Christianity. The exhibitions were held in Leiden and in Utrecht and comprised ancient, medieval and modern Armenia art. Dr. Kouymjian in his paper discussed in detail the question “What Is Armenian Art?” He asked the audience to reflect on the possible answers to the question and on the arbitrary nature of the term “Armenian Art.”

The in folio volume, scheduled to appear in the first half of 2002, will be more than 500 pages and contain over 200 full page color plates and a very dense text and many comparative alphabet tables illustrating the various forms of Armenian manuscript writing.