The Yerevan House Museums: A Museum Junkie’s Delight

You don’t have to read too many of my posts to figure out I love museums. These are the temples where art and history are exalted, and it’s no wonder that a worshipper of these pursuits like me would find such solace there. Instead of creating some complex of Armenian art and culture, Yerevan has taken a different approach to memorialize their poets, authors, composers, artists and filmmakers: the house museum. Scattered through the capital are over a dozen house museums devoted to cultural icons. Each house museum offers an in-depth look at the lives and creative outputs of these artists. The museum staffs were the icing on the cake, often comprised of relatives of the artists and/or passionate devotees, their enthusiasm helped put over even the driest of material.

My one gripe is that these house museums have some truly restrictive opening hours. They are closed on random days throughout the week and rarely open their doors in the mornings before 10 or 11; forget about going in the early evenings. It really takes some advance planning to catch them open. Do NOT trust the hours on google maps or in Lonely Planet. Check the house museum’s official website for the current schedule. I actually made a spreadsheet for the six days I would be in Yerevan so I could track which museums would be open on each day, along with the opening hours for each museum. It’s annoying, but it’s the only way to catch more than one or two and the experiences were worth the extra effort. Without further ado, here are a sampling of my favorite six…

Ervand Kochar House Museum

Ervand Kochar was born in 1899 in Tbilisi, but this does not make him a Georgian in the eyes of the people, as his family was ethnically Armenian. Unlike in the United States, where being born within its borders automatically makes you an American regardless of your heritage, ethnicity will always trump nationality in the Caucasus. Kochar may have been born in Georgia and completed his art schooling in Georgia, but he nevertheless joined the Union of Armenian Artists, as Kochar viewed himself as an Armenian through and through.

After the Soviets occupied the region in 1922, Kochar escaped the Caucasus and gained fame in Paris until 1936 when the yearning for his homeland was so great that he moved to Yerevan knowing full well that he would most likely not be allowed to travel outside the Soviet Union again. (Kochar’s works often clashed with the Soviet censors and he did spend 1941-43 imprisoned in a Soviet jail.)

I think it’s safe to call Kochar Armenia’s most famous sculptor, although truthfully sculpture constitutes only a small portion of his output. His greatest technical works are known as “Paintings in Space” in which Kochar would paint several panels and then place them on a slowly rotating turntable. The pieces became half painting-half sculpture and his house museum showcases some fine examples of the technique. (There was a strict no photograph rule in the museum, but I did purchase a set of placards with photos of his work.) Kochar also played with gender, often painting/sculpting humans with both a penis and breasts; rather than internal organs, cityscapes beat inside the chest cavities. “Melancholy,” now found outside the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art (an excellent museum itself), represents the peak synthesis of these ideas, and is my favorite of his works.

Aram Khachaturian House Museum

Aram Khachaturian’s house museum has a leg up on the competition as you are treated to the sounds of the tunesmith’s musical output that fill the exhibition space. Like Kochar, Khachaturian was also born into an Armenian family residing in Tbilisi. Unlike some of his fellow artists, he fully embraced, or at least learned how to navigate the Soviet censors. In fact, he rose to the rank of Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers, a position he held until his death in 1978.

Despite being known as one of the three great Soviet symphonic composers, along with Prokofiev and Shostakovich, his music is distinctively Armenian, often incorporating traditional folk melodies and rhythms into this work. He wrote the Armenian SSR anthem, as well as the first Armenian symphony, ballet and film score. His two most famous works are the ballets Gayane and Spartacus, both of which are still performed outside of Armenia today. I really fell in love with his music after visiting the museum and find him to be a highly underrated 20th-Century composer, at least outside of Armenia.

Avetik Isahakian House Museum

The trickiest house museums are easily those of the poets and novelists. Without any visual or aural representation of their work, you’re forced to rely on the quality of your museum guide. (There are always guides- human, not audio- available at house museums. Sometimes they’re included in the price of admission and sometimes they’re a few bucks extra, but they’re always worth it; it never hurts to tip these often college students at the end of the tour too!)

Avetik Isahakian (sometimes transcribed as Isahakyan, but the museum uses the former, which is good enough for me) was born in 1875 and was as much a political activist for Armenian independence as he was a poet. In and out of jail, Isahakian traveled around Europe in an attempt to garner support for Armenian causes. After the Armenian Genocide committed by the Young Turks Party during WWI, Isahakian published his most important collection of poems called “The White Book.” He forever endured to bring attention to the genocide throughout his career.

Despite his fiery political past, Isahakian returned to Soviet Armenia in 1936, receiving medals and honors from the Soviet government for his writing. To me this seemed like a strange about-face for such a revolutionary personality, but modern Armenia does not view him as some sort of Benedict Arnold. He’s very much revered and his image is featured on the 10,000 dram note.

If you’re interested in his works in English, the house museum has several volumes for sale. These books have been self-published and you will have a hard time finding them online outside of Armenia; not everything is available on amazon. It’s difficult to capture the beauty of poetry in translation, but let’s give it a go:

The Wind is Howling Through the Winter Night

The wind is howling through the winter night,

Like to a pack of angry wolves that cry,

My hapless willows bend before its might,

Their broken branches in the garden lie.

Alas, my heart, thy love since childhood’s days

Hath wept, thy dream was understood by none.

Seek not in vain a friend to know thy ways-

The soul is born eternally alone.

Thou from thy hapless heart that love shall cast-

That child of earth, false, illegitimate

Shalt fling it to the night and wintry blast-

Out in the storm- there let it find its fate.

There motherless and orphaned let it weep,

And let the wind it’s sobbings onward bear

Unto some desert place, or stormy deep-

But not where human soul its voice may hear.

The wind is howling in its agony

All through this snow-bound night, with piercing cry,

Alas, beneath the broken willow tree

My shattered love lies dying- let it die.

Martiros Sarian House Museum

While all the house-museum artists drew inspiration from their love of Armenia, none seemed to be more deeply affected by the Motherland than painter Martiros Sarian. He once opined that, “The Earth, like a living being, has its own spirit, and without one’s native land, without close touch with one’s motherland, it is impossible to find oneself, one’s soul.” I can understand where’s he’s coming from, but truthfully I can’t relate to the sentiment. These men saw Armenia briefly experience independence from 1918-21 (Sarian lived from 1880-1972) and then they watched the Soviet Union take control of their culture. Although the United States has been attacked, it has never been occupied, and certainly our government has never fallen since declaring independence in 1776. Conversely, one had to fight to keep the Armenian identity alive. Poems and paintings about Ararat may have been aesthetically pleasing, but in actuality they were political manifestos. Sarian wasn’t painting pretty landscapes; he was shouting, “Remember Armenia! Remember the Motherland!”

Sarian, who had lived in Moscow, Egypt, Turkey and Iran, had returned to Yerevan by 1915 to witness the refugees who had escaped the Armenian genocide. This deeply affected him and his work; afterward he devoted himself to almost solely depicting the people and places of the Armenian SSR.

There’s a peace and beauty to Sarian’s works to be sure, but there’s also a longing and melancholy. I was extremely moved by the collection in this house museum, and while I tend to gravitate towards more contemporary art, his paintings hit a sweet spot for me. It’s hard to not have a little of his love for Armenia rub off on you.

Yeghishe Charents House Museum

The Yeghishe Charents House Museum has one of the sadder tales to tell in Yerevan. Run by one of Charents’ granddaughters, the museum is lovingly put together and my guide not only talked Armenian poetry, but we had a full-on discussion of Caucasus politics post-Soviet independence. Charents was born in 1897 and would accomplish much in the 40 short years he lived.

Although he published a few poems before 1915, the Armenian genocide upended his literary ambitions and he joined the army to repel the Turkish forces. He later moved to Moscow and became a member of the Bolsheviks. He saw them as the only solution to push the Turks out of Armenia and bring independence to his homeland. Of course, he didn’t expect the Bolsheviks to turn around and occupy Armenia themselves (the liberators so often become the captors in history) and fold them into the newly formed Soviet Union, causing the love he once held for the party to turn to despair and anger.

Charents was critical of Stalin and by 1934 his works had been banned; he would later be swept up in the Great Purge, where he died in a prison hospital in 1937. Although his writing was banned and all published copies were to be destroyed, one of Charents’ close friends took his manuscripts and buried them in her backyard where they remained for decades. Thanks to her quick thinking, many of his poems that may have been lost to the world were saved.

His most famous poem is easily I Love the Sun Sweet Taste of Armenia, a beautiful paean to the country he loved and died for. I will give you the first and third stanzas here:

I love the sun-baked taste of Armenian words,

The lilt of ancient lutes in sweet laments,

Our blood-red, fragrant roses bending

As in Nayiran dances, danced still by our girls.

Wherever I go, I take our mournful music,

Our steel forged letters turned to prayers.

However sharp my wounds are drained of blood

Or orphaned, my yearning heart turns with love.

Serges Parajanov House Museum

I saved the Sergey Parajanov House Museum for last so that we can end on an upbeat note. Everyone knows Parajanov as the director of The Color of Pomegranates, but it turns out that Parajanov’s films are the least interesting part of his museum. Throughout his life, but especially in the latter half, Parajanov created fascinating 3-D collages out of found objects. These eccentric, whimsical and highly symbolic pieces fill his house museum to the brim and are one of the unexpected delights of Yerevan.

Parajanov is different from the rest of the men on this list as he was born in 1924, firmly in the Soviet Union, and never experienced the brief period of Armenian independence as everyone else did. Parajanov was always in trouble with the Soviet censors. His films and art were constantly being edited and/or banned and he was in and out of prison so often he needed a punch card.

The Color of Pomegranates deserves its highly-regarded place in world cinema, and there is an interesting exhibit on the creation of the film, but it’s the collages that steal the show. There is such creativity and unexpected humor that viewing the pieces is nothing short of joyous. On the serious side, one of Parajanov’s prison stints was in a gulag in Siberia for four years. Despite the horrible conditions, he sketched over 800 charcoal drawings and produced a series of ragdolls that are on display in the museum.

Parajanov died in 1990, just one year shy of seeing Armenia achieve independence. His celebrated films live on, but I hope more people discover his other artistic pursuits which delighted me so. I know this has been a long post, but I hope it has demonstrated how important artistic expression is to Armenians and how this reflects the love the people have for their nation. I will leave you with some of Parajanov’s collages- who knows what they might inspire in you.