CHEMICALS AND CULTURE
By Marina Kamenev

The Moscow Times, Russia
Dec 17 2007

David Sarkisyan, the director of the Shchusev Architecture Museum,
often lets it drop that he has lived four lives.

"I am exceptionally lucky as a person, because despite having four
professions I have never ‘worked,’ my wage was always small, but I
only did things that I liked, I am one of the happiest people in the
world," he said.

Born in Yerevan, Sarkisyan came to Moscow to study when he was a
teenager. He has dabbled in professions ranging from science to film.

This year he turned 60 and has been enjoying his fourth life as
director of the Shchusev Architecture Museum for five years.

Sarkisyan was always attracted to science.

"I have nothing against religion, but I am 100 percent — no, a 200
percent atheist," he said.

"I respect many religious people but I do not believe in a God, I do
believe in the reality of this life and I think the only way to find
out more about it is through science."

He studied physiology at Moscow State University.

"After I finished, I had the best three years of my life, I did
absolutely nothing but read … under a system known to us as a
postgraduate program," he laughed.

"You do an exam on philosophy, which was essentially Marxist at the
time, you do a test on another language, and I already knew English
fluently, and you get to do some kind of experimental investigation,
which no one supervises or reads, so it was a three-year rest."

After Sarkisyan finished his postgraduate degree, he went on to do
a doctorate in pharmaceuticals, but never completed it and started
working as a pharmacist. For 15 years he studied the nervous system
through many experiments. "In those 15 years, hundreds of white rats
died in my hands," he said with a tinge of regret.

Sarkisyan said he discovered a nerve stimulant that was thought
initially to be harmful to the body, and invented a medicine called
ipidacrine, which is used in Japan to help treat diseases such as
Alzheimer’s.

Perestroika signalled the end of many things in Sarkisyan’s life. He
stopped working in pharmaceuticals, divorced his wife and walked into
a completely different field almost by accident.

Sarkisyan had an acquaintance, Rustam Khamdamov, who was trying to get
out of Russia. Sarkisyan had many connections at that time and, as he
became friends with Khamdamov, found out that he was a filmmaker and
the reason he wanted to get out of Russia was to make more movies. "I
convinced him that he did not need to leave Russia to make films, and
that is how we started working on something together," Sarkisyan said.

Sarkisyan was the first assistant director of the movie "Anna
Karamazoff," written and directed by Khamdamov. Starring French
actor Jeanne Moreau, it went to Cannes, but was never released due
to problems with the French producer.

"At 44 … I walked on the red carpet next to Jeanne Moreau," Sarkisyan
said. "It was a glamorous end to my career in film," he said.

"While all my friends were becoming oligarchs and politicians, two
things I could have easily done myself, I chose to do television
documentaries. At this time it was free — I had access to all the
archives and I could make films about everything that I was interested
in," he said.

Sarkisyan admitted that most of his films were not professional, "but
they were all ideologically fresh, they always had something new,"
he said.

The film of Sarkisyan’s still shown today is "Comrade Kollontai
and her Lovers," a documentary about the revolutionary Alexandra
Kollontai. "I was always great with titles," Sarkisyan said.

In 2001, a friend told Sarkisyan about the Shchusev State Architecture
Museum, and about the possibility of running it.

"I was not interested so much in architecture but in the museum,"
he said.

"Most people are idiots, and they produce cultural porridge that
they have managed to transfer into the rest of civilization, idiotic
things like astrology. The museum is an island in this sea of rubbish
and is the only way to preserve real culture," he said.

Bolshoi Gorod magazine’s art critic, Yekaterina Degot, praised
Sarkisyan’s work at the museum.

"I think Sarkisyan has created an amazing space for contemporary
culture and exhibitions," she said. "I am always interested in what
is going on there, and it’s somewhere I frequent with my friends."

Sarkisyan is not modest when giving advice on being a museum
director. "Running a museum is like being a president, it’s not
something you can train for," he laughed. "If you need to ask how to
do it, you’re not right for the job."