Art: "Creation" exhibition dedicated to Aivazovsky’s 200th anniversary attended by 56.000 visitors

Armenpress News Agency , Armenia
 Monday


"Creation" exhibition dedicated to Aivazovsky's 200th anniversary
attended by 56.000 visitors



YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 26, ARMENPRESS. A record number of people attended
the exhibition dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Ivan (Hovhannes)
Aivazovsky which was held in the National Gallery of Armenia from
September 14 to February 15.

The exhibition, titled “Hovhannes Aivazovsky: Creation”, was attended
by 56.000 visitors.

52 paintings, 26 graphical, one decorative-applied and 20 documentary
works were displayed at the exhibition. “Chaos: Creation of the World”
was also displayed.

Arman Tsaturyan, director of the National Gallery of Armenia, gave an
interview to ARMENPRESS talking about the exhibition.

-Mr. Tsaturyan, many people say that the Creation exhibition was
exclusive. In your opinion, what was the reason of its exclusivity?

-Have you heard about any exhibition in Armenia which had 56.000
visitors? This speaks about the exhibition being as unprecedented. We
managed to do what for half a century any of the museums in our
country didn’t. I don’t know whether it will be possible to repeat or
exceed our record, but we definitely showed that it is possible to
hold a good, beautiful and profitable exhibition with minimal
investments. The exhibition is already over, but believe me, if it
continued, the flow of people would not stop. For me and the people
who participated in holding this exhibition, it’s a great excitement:
success is that promotes people and leads to both professional and
financial satisfaction.

By this exhibition we showed that the cultural field has changed. It’s
good from the one hand, and bad from the other, since always much is
expected from the winner.

-Who among the visitors were prevailing?

-Everything on us is differentiated. For already three years the
Gallery sells tickets online, and we know how many students,
pensioners and school children visited us. Last time we have checked
the data two months ago. The number of school children reaches 18.000.
I am confident their number will increase within the course of time.

-A large number of art-lovers visited the Gallery to see the “Chaos:
Creation of the World” renowned painting from the collection of the
Mekhitarist Congregation in Venice. How do you characterize this
mysterious work of art?

-As people live a mysterious life, their works do the same. The
concept of the exhibition was as follows: “Chaos: Creation of the
World” and “Noah goes down from Ararat”. The second birth of the world
began from Ararat. The exhibition was such as well. I would state that
the “Chaos: Creation of the World” is a virtuous work. Aivazovsky is
an author of more than 6000 paintings, but not all of them are
masterpieces. Our exhibition displayed wonderful works, and the
“Chaos: Creation of the World” was one of them, a masterpiece that
enriched the exhibition.

-Once you said that the success of the exhibition was also linked with
the use of latest PR technologies. Will you talk about this in more
detail?

-It is very important that all components of the exhibition are at a
high level, starting from visualization that are ensured by respective
devices, up to the color scheme of walls. While organizing an
exhibition everything is important, such as the hall light, shadow and
sound. When you reach the good level of all of these, it’s already
success. Of course, the exhibition’s advertisement was also well
thought and was implemented correctly. The video clip of the
exhibition received two awards by the Adobe company.

In the future we plan to organize the exhibition of paintings by Pablo
Picasso. For this purpose we are holding talks with our foreign
partners so that the best paintings in their collection will be
displayed at our Gallery.

I want to inform that the art-lovers can online acquire the copies of
the best paintings presented in the Gallery’s collection which are on
high-quality. In the near future we also plan to open a café named
after French-Armenian famous painter Carzou in the Gallery’s foyer
which will be a favorite place for all art-lovers.

Interview by Angela Hambardzumyan

English – translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan