Asbarez: Heghnar Watenpaugh’s ‘Missing Pages’ to be Presented at Glendale Library

GLENDALE—Next month, author Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh will present her newly published book “Missing Pages: The Modern Life of Medieval Manuscript, From Genocide to Justice” at the Glendale Central Library Auditorium. The presentation will take place on Thursday, October 17 at 7 p.m., at 222 E Harvard St, Glendale, CA 91205. The program is organized by Glendale Library’s Arts & Culture department, and will be presented in English.

Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Davis. She is the award-winning author of “The Image of an Ottoman City: Architecture in Aleppo” (2004). Her writing has also appeared in the Huffington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

In 2010, the world’s wealthiest art institution, the J. Paul Getty Museum, found itself confronted by a century-old genocide. The Armenian Church was suing for the return of eight pages from the Zeytun Gospels, a manuscript illuminated by the greatest medieval Armenian artist, Toros Roslin. Protected for centuries in a remote church, the holy manuscript had followed the waves of displaced people exterminated during the Armenian genocide. Passed from hand to hand, caught in the confusion and brutality of the First World War, it was cleaved in two. Decades later, the manuscript found its way to the Republic of Armenia, while its missing eight pages came to the Getty. Reconstructing the path of the pages, Watenpaugh uncovers the rich tapestry of an extraordinary artwork and the people touched by it. At once a story of genocide and survival, of unimaginable loss and resilience, “The Missing Pages” captures the human costs of war and persuasively makes the case for a human right to art.

Admission to the presentation will be free. Free parking, for a maximum of three hours, will be available across the street at the Glendale Marketplace parking structure, with validation at the service desk.