MEDFORD, Mass. — Prof. Christina Maranci of Tufts University will present her newly published book The Art of Armenia: An Introduction (Oxford University Press) at the Tufts Alumnae Lounge, 40 Talbot Ave, Medford, on Thursday, October 4, at 7:30 p.m. The program is the first Annual Prof. Charles B. Garabedian Lecture and is sponsored by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), the Darakjian Jafarian Chair in Armenian History, and the Tufts Armenian Club.
Armenia has a material history and visual culture that reaches back to the Paleolithic era. Maranci’s newly published The Art of Armenia provides a survey of the arts of Armenia from antiquity to the early modern times. It covers a range of media, including architecture, stone sculpture, works in metal, wood, and cloth, manuscript illumination, and ceramic arts, and places Armenian art within broad historical, archeological, and cultural contexts. The Art of Armenia offers students, scholars and heritage readers of the Armenian community a complete and authoritative introduction to 3,000 years of Armenian art, archeology, architecture and design.
Maranci is Arthur H. Dadian and Ara T. Oztemel Professor of Armenian Art and serves as chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Tufts University, as well as an academic advisor to the Armenian Museum of America and to NAASR. She has published and lectured widely, having authored three previous monographs and more than 70 essays, articles and reviews, including the books Medieval Armenian Architecture: Constructions of Race and Nation (2001) and Vigilant Powers: Three Churches of Early Medieval Armenia (2015). For the latter work, in 2016, she received from NAASR the Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies. Her work combines scholarship on the history of Armenian art and architecture with advocacy for at-risk Armenian heritage, particularly medieval monuments in the Republic of Turkey.
Garabedian (1917-1991) was born in Everett, Mass., and graduated magna cum laude from Everett High School and Tufts University (A.B. English and history). He attended Harvard Law School and graduated magna cum laude from Boston University Law School. During World War II, he served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and in the late 1940s he began his teaching career at Suffolk University Law School. His expertise was tort litigation and damages, courses which he continuously taught at Suffolk University Law School for over 40 years. At the time of his death, Garabedian was the senior faculty professor at Suffolk University Law School. The annual lecture in his memory has been established at NAASR by Garabedian’s niece, NAASR Board Member Joan E. Kolligian.
This event is free and open to the public. A reception and refreshments will immediately follow the program and question-and-answer session.