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Non-Governmental Institutional Trends in Independent Armenia

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"Art Education & Exhibition:

Non-Governmental Institutional Trends in Independent Armenia"

Author: Marine Karoyan

Publishing House: ANTENOR

Language: Armenian

The book presents the author's nine interviews with the founding heads of non-state centres of art education and exhibition established after Armenia's independence in 1991.

All the presented institutions are not only completely different from the Armenian art organizations of the Soviet period but also differ from each other, each being part of the spectrum of necessary changes and developments typical of the time. All these institutions are undoubtedly really valuable, no matter how well-established or disorganized they are, because they are the seeds that were planted in the ground during the general catastrophic period for Armenia, based on which all the next artistic activities were created. The interviews offered to the reader were conducted during 2014-2015.

The series of interviews clearly show the messy nature of the time. It also shows the political changes in Armenia, the attitude towards culture. Highly appreciating the contribution of artists, the author notes the pain of loss. With the state's appreciative, benevolent, helpful attitude, these institutions would become the basis for Armenia's much greater integration and development into world art. Unfortunately, that never happened.

The present comprehensive publication of these interviews may be a contribution to one of the debates of contemporary art in the discourse of memory and forgetting the initiatives of the past.

"That is the reason why we preferred the founders of these organizations to tell their stories themselves. These stories are part of the formation and development of new art in newly independent Armenia. Successful, incomplete or failed, these are our stories”, -  the author states.