WATERTOWN — Project Save, the world’s largest photo archive dedicated to preserving the regional, national and global Armenian experience, marks its 50th anniversary this spring with a bold new vision to expand its collection by encouraging people in New England, across the country, and around the world to contribute their Armenian family histories to this vital global resource.
The idea for Project Save started in the late 1960s in New York City, when founder Ruth Thomasian discovered that many in the Armenian community held photographs documenting their families’ lives before and after the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Recognizing their historical significance, Thomasian dedicated her life to collecting and preserving such images, as well as documenting the people and the situations depicted in them. She established Project Save as a nonprofit in 1975. Over five decades, what began as a personal passion grew into an internationally recognized archive of more than 100,000 original photographs and ephemera spanning the Armenian diaspora in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Credit: Project Save. Courtesy of Souren Stevens
In 2021 Project Save hired Arto Vaun to be its first executive director. As an artist and academic, Vaun saw real value in the trove of history contained within the photos. “This is more than an archive. It’s a living, growing record of Armenian life here, across the U.S., and around the world. In celebrating 50 years, Project Save is not just looking back — we’re working to ensure stories like these are preserved for generations to come,” he said.
Last year, Vaun relocated Project Save to its own dedicated space: a 2,000-square-foot headquarters with climate-controlled storage space in the Armenian-heavy community of Watertown, Mass. The new location has a public gallery and exhibition space, a conference/education room, and guest parking. Vaun says the organization’s next phase includes more exhibits and programming, connections with like-minded nonprofit cultural and heritage preservation organizations, enhanced educational outreach to schools and universities, ongoing development of its online presence (projectsave.org) and social media platforms (@projectsave_archives on Instagram), documentaries based on its archive, and more.
As Thomasian, who turns 80 this spring, steps away from day-to-day work on the project, Vaun plans to build on the founder’s decades of work. One long-term goal is to position the archive as a central resource for immigrant and displaced communities across the U.S. and beyond. “The incredible legacy Ruth leaves us is the starting point for a new phase of our work to come,” Vaun said.
A Call to Action
