IN Person at the Ararat-Eskijian Museum, Sheen Chapel, 15105 Mission Hills Road, Mission Hills, CA 91345

Livestream on the Ararat-Eskijian Museum YouTube channel. 

PRESENTER
DR. VAZKEN KHATCHIG DAVIDIAN, Calouste Gulbenkian Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford

The presentation undertakes a close reading of a major painting – Provincial Wedding in Moush – by the notable, but now forgotten, Constantinople artist Garabed ‘Charles’ Nichanian (1861-1950). Unseen since its last exhibition in Chicago in 1893, the image of this monumental work has survived through a single known photographic reproduction and at least two engravings published in contemporary journals. Moreover, two extensive reviews complement the photograph with a plethora of descriptive detail based on direct visual observation of the painting in the company of the artist. Crucially, they also reveal much about the work’s reception among contemporary reformist Ottoman Armenian intellectuals. Davidian utilizes archival material to examine an important painting replete with ethnographic detail and local color against–and to re-situate it within–the cultural, social and political historical setting in which it was conceived, executed, displayed, and received.

Vazken Khatchig Davidian is Calouste Gulbenkian Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. He obtained his PhD in art history from Birkbeck College, University of London, in April 2019. His doctoral thesis was entitled ‘Image of the Bantoukhd Hamal of Constantinople: Late Nineteenth Century Representations of Migrant Workers from Ottoman Armenia’. He is currently working on his monograph "Migrant Workers, Marauding Tribesmen: Late Nineteenth Century Representations of Armenians and Kurds from the Ottoman East."

CO-SPONSORS
Ararat-Eskijian Museum (AEM)
National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)