Armenian Church textiles displayed at Tufts University

PanARMENIAN.Net – The Aidekman Arts Center of the Tufts University Art Galleries presents an exhibition of Armenian church textiles from August 5 to December 5 called Connecting Threads / Survivor Objects, the Armenian Mirror Spectator reports.

It is a small but varied collection of 11 embroidered, block printed and painted objects that are rare surviving legacies of Armenian culture. The exhibition was organized by Christina Maranci, Arthur H. Dadian and Ara T. Oztemel Professor of Armenian Art and Architecture, and Chiara Pidatella, Research Curator.

Dr. Maranci related the origins of the exhibit: “Basically it came about by me poking around through the website of the Armenian Museum and also the Museum of Fine Arts and noticing the wealth of liturgical textiles. I thought it would be a nice way to exhibit Armenian art by looking at textiles because of the ways in which textiles speak to the early modern experience. I talked about it with Dina Deitsch, the director of the art galleries. That is how it came about and it seemed like a really great opportunity to teach.”

The materials for the exhibition emerged from the work conducted in Maranci’s spring 2021 seminar, The Threads of Survival, which included ten undergraduate and graduate students. She said, “My intention was never for this to be a large show. It was always to be something that was the product of student research. The crucial thing actually was taking objects that had been almost completely unstudied, barely catalogued, and to do deep research on them. Each student was assigned a single object, and had a chance to do that kind of careful work with a single object over the course of a semester.”

It is also an unusual exhibition for the galleries because they usually display contemporary art, from the 20th century to the present, and don’t often show historical works, Deitsch said. The Armenian focus adds to its uniqueness.