BOSTON — On a clear and bright Sunday morning that can only be experienced in Massachusetts in April – in this particular case April 18 – a small and special group of volunteers, some preferring to work with little recognition, managed another reconfiguration of the sculpture at the Armenian Heritage Park on the Greenway in Boston. The abstract sculpture is a split dodecahedron that sits on a reflecting pool, and can be changed into twenty-six shapes.
What many don’t realize is that the shape changing process is not automated and that the many elements of the sculpture must be lifted by a tall sky crane in pieces and rearranged, replaced and secured by an experienced work crew.
Onlookers and visitors were few at 7:30 in the morning, but their presence for Armenians was meaningful because they were the connection to the past and the memories of their ancestors who perished in the many long years of persecution, murder, and genocide by the government of Turkey against its own national minority citizens before, during and after World War One. For others, the sculpture represents the pulling away, sometimes forcible, from their country of origin, though the connection is kept and continually changes.
The formal 106th annual commemoration of the Armenian Genocide will take place on Saturday April 24, 2021 when Armenians from throughout New England and beyond will gather on at the Parkman Bandstand of Boston Common at 6 p.m. and then march to the Armenian Genocide Monument at the Armenian Heritage Park on the Rose Kennedy Greenway for a program planned by the Massachusetts Committee to Commemorate the Armenian Genocide.
Video below and all accompanying photos by Ken Martin.
