A Broken Connection: The Armenian Financial Community and the Making of Culture
By Peter Balakian // January 18, 2014
When the Illinois Holocaust Museum asked me in the late summer of 2012
if I would be the advising scholar and a primary writer of text for a
major exhibit that the museum would develop for the commemoration of
the Armenian Genocide in 2015, I was delighted and agreed. I was also
excited by the idea that the exhibit would travel not only in the
United States, but possibly in Europe and South America. It was a
breakthrough to have the second largest Holocaust museum in the United
States planning an Armenian Genocide exhibit entitled, `The Shadow of
Ararat: The Armenian Genocide.’ Not only would there be a significant
exhibit – as the advising scholar, I can affirm that the proposal was
excellent – it would be orchestrated and curated by a non-Armenian
organization of high professional expertise.
In the last week of April, I went to the Illinois Holocaust Museum to
give a keynote lecture for the April 24th commemoration and to kick
off the campaign to raise the funding for the exhibit from the
Armenian community of Chicago. We all left in good spirits,
anticipating working together on the project. But, in early October,
when I hadn’t heard anything from the curators at the museum, I called
to see what was happening. My friends there reported that despite
various conversations with the leaders of the Chicago-Armenian
community, the community had not delivered any funding. Apparently,
they had tried to find funds outside of their region as well, but in
the end could not deliver any funding, and the time necessary for
planning was running out. I was shocked.
The budget, which was about $600,000, seemed appropriate for the show
planned, and in a larger context, I would say, it was a bargain, for
this was a dream come true for many Armenians. With the museum about
to pull the plug on it, I went into emergency mode, trying to raise
several hundred thousand dollars in less than two weeks. I made calls
for days to various friends and colleagues around the country. In the
end, I could not raise enough money in such a short time. Shortly
after, the museum cancelled its plans for the exhibit.
While many of us are more than disappointed in the failure of the
Chicago-Armenian community to fulfill its obligation for 2015, I think
this reflects a larger failure of the Armenian Diasporan community in
the United States to create culture – by which I mean to use financial
means to conceive and engineer cultural production. A hundred years
after the genocide, Armenians in the United States, probably the most
propitious place in the world for cultural production (just look at
the film, book, arts and performing arts industries in the U.S.), have
almost nothing to show in the domain of cultural production and
representation in the mainstream. Armenians have created no mainstream
cultural foundations, museums, performing arts centers, except for
several cultural institutions such as NAASR, ANI, the Armenian Library
and Museum, Zoryan Institute in Canada, all of which do admirable
work, but there are no research institutes like that of the Armenian
Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan.
The Armenian financial community has not been able to bring to
fruition one feature film about the genocide or other aspects of
Armenian history. By 2013, and given the presence of Armenian
Americans in Hollywood in the 20th century, there’s something shocking
about this. Surely, there might have been at least a dozen or so
feature films dealing with these issues and stories in the past 50
years.
I want to underscore the obvious. Without culture there is no presence
of a nation/ethnic group/people in a given society – in popular cultural
thought, academic and intellectual thought, and in the wider global
culture. Individuals live and die, money comes and goes, national
borders appear and disappear, but artistic representation and culture
remain the primary mode of general knowledge about any
civilization/nation/ethnic group. Without museums, centers for the
visual and performing arts, research institutes, sustained funding for
translations, endowed chairs for academics, and more, there is no
identity for any nation.
In the Armenian case (and I’m sure Armenians are not alone in this)
something has gone wrong, or perhaps has not gone at all. Armenians in
the United States, and probably in Europe, South America, and the
Middle East (this is not true in the Republic of Armenia), have almost
nothing to show as culture, either to themselves or to the wider
public. Other than the individual achievements of various people in
the arts and academic and intellectual world who have broken through
into the mainstream, Armenian culture is a blank to our fellow
Americans.
One Jewish scholar put it this way: ‘There seems to be a disconnect
between the Armenian business community and the Armenian arts
community; the business people don’t see that investing in the arts is
investing in the core continuity of Armenian civilization. Investing
in the community’s culture should be understood as a celebration of
the life of all Armenians past and present, something that the Turkish
perpetrators tried to extinguish. This is certainly the philosophy of
a lot of Jewish investment in Jewish arts. It’s a `f-you Hitler’
attitude.’
Let’s take, just briefly, the case of Jewish-American culture as an
example. We must acknowledge that there are more Jews than Armenians
in the United States and in the world, and that there are
correspondingly more resources, and that there is a much longer
history in their diaspora and hence more experience.
Notwithstanding this, the discrepancy between Jewish-American cultural
production and Armenian-American cultural production is painful to
consider.
If we take New York City alone, we find that Jewish culture is
represented by major institutions: the Jewish Museum, the Museum of
Jewish Heritage, the 92nd Street Y, and the Center for Jewish History,
which houses five Jewish cultural organizations. All of these are
beautiful edifices run with high administrative professionalism, and
all serve a broad public. If you look just cursorily around the
country, you find the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington, D.C., the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, Holocaust
museums in major cities from Chicago to Houston to Fort Lauderdale. I
won’t spend time cataloging the Jewish cultural centers, the endowed
chairs, the journals, magazines, newspapers, publishing imprints, and
so on. The fact is clear.
There is no Armenian who would not applaud Armenian-American
philanthropists for the commitment they have made to the Republic
since its independence and to the extraordinary work organizations
like the AGBU (the grandparent of it all), FAR, Armenian Tree Project,
COAF, and others have done globally over the past decades for Armenian
communities everywhere. Armenian civilization is about 2,500 years old
and it embodies a remarkable story of survival against great odds. Its
survival and identity are inextricable from the existence of the
seminal texts made by such figures as Toros Roslin, Krikor of Nareg,
Avivovsky, Komitas, Charents, Essayan, Gorky, Sarian, Saroyan,
Paradjanov, Minas, Khatchadourian, Hovaness, the architects of the
medieval churches, and so on. Armenian artists and intellectuals have
been impressive cultural and aesthetic creators, especially given the
duress of their historical situation. But they have not been backed by
their financial communities.
If in the modern era the Armenian financial community can’t figure out
ways to produce and finance Armenian culture and history – both
historical and contemporary – and our present is very rich and dynamic
(perhaps more so than ever) with artists, writers, composers,
filmmakers, and others, then Armenian culture will not exist in any
serious, representative way in the wider public arena, and
correspondingly, Armenia as a cultural entity will be relegated to a
ghettoized place in an obscure corner. This need not be the case.
There are some extraordinary individuals in our business community who
have made a great deal happen, and some of them – though very few – have
put some of their energies toward culture and education. They are
great visionaries for doing so. I am deeply grateful for the personal
support I’ve received from some of these extraordinary people. But,
for the most part, in the big picture, there has been no sustained
creation and nurturing of cultural production of the kind I and many
of my colleagues in the various cultural arenas are noting.
I know it’s difficult – given the pressing challenges of working for the
Republic and working for a complex diasporan society – but it has to be
done. The Armenian community – especially its financial
infrastructure – has to begin to work with its cultural producers
(writers, artists, architects, academics, journalists, etc.) in order
to create lasting institutions, fora, structures for culture to be
made, created, and represented.
Furthermore, certain segments of the Armenian community need to feel
at ease and embrace other communities that want to support Armenian
history and culture. It might be noted that the only major PBS
documentary made about the Armenian Genocide was made by Andrew
Goldberg, and the only major feature film – Atom Egoyan’s `Ararat’ – was
produced by Robert Lantos.
The Armenian financial community has to turn the corner; it has to see
the issue in a fresh and larger way, to make Armenian cultural
production a top priority, if Armenian history and culture – and Armenia
as a significant, ancient civilization – are to be a visible force in
the global arena. There can be no progress without this.
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2014/01/18/a-broken-connection-the-armenian-financial-community-and-the-making-of-culture/