25.12.2015


Today the annual press conference of Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute and secretary of state commission on coordinating the 100th anniversary events of the Armenian Genocide took place. During the press-release AGMI Director and secretary of state commission on coordinating the 100th anniversary events of the Armenian Genocide Hayk Demoyan referred to the important achievements of the museum, the problems in the beginning of the year commitments and challenges of the museum-institute.
During 2015, temporary exhibitions were organized by AGMI in more than 60 cities in Armenia and abroad. In the last years, Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute had published about seventy literature units; Armenian, Russian, English and French collections, monographs, books, catalogs. Around 60 international conferences had referred to the theme of Armenian Genocide. The main exhibition of the museum had opened in April which, however is the most important achievement of the year.
AGMI Director mentioned that the exhibition was created by the museum completely without any payment. The museum staff refused to have any additional payment considering that it is a honor to pay tribute to the memory of the innocent martyrs in such a way. According to approximate calculations, taking into account the contemporary global prices, we are talking about a few million dollars.
“In the end of the year it turned out that we have three and four times more problems than we had in the beginning of the year. The new museum exhibition and the organized events got extremely positive opinions from local and Diaspora-Armenians as well as, foreigners, both in terms of nature and content. We succeeded to organize events properly. This is what I heard during my work-trips, meetings and contacts”, mentioned Hayk Demoyan and added that there is unprecedented growth of awareness about Armenian Genocide.
Deputy Director of Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute also talked about the achievement and successes of the year. This year AGMI had organized and hosted the 12th meeting of International Association of Genocide Scholars, which is the most prestigious association of the field. AGMI researchers had participated in various international conferences in Copenhagen, Chicago, New York, Berlin, Edinburgh, Buenos Aires, Winnipeg and other places. Cooperation memorandums were signed with the biggest centers of genocide studies, such as, University of Southern California Shoah Foundation, Shoah Memorial Museum in Paris, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Lidice Memorial and other museums and research centers. Deputy Director stressed that for five years Raphael Lemkin scholarship is granted to foreign scholars giving the opportunity to make their researches at Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute. “The best place to study the theme of Armenian Genocide is Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute. No other library in the world obtains more documents about the theme”, said Suren Manukyan.
Deputy Director of the museum Lusine Abrahamyan presented datas about the visitors. The museum had more than 70 thousand visitors after the reopening in April, 50 thousand of which were foreigners, and about 16 thousands students of educational departments of Armenia and Diaspora. During 2015 the museum had more than one thousand Turkish visitors. Presidents of Russia, France, Cyprus and Serbia as well as governmental heads and representatives of other countries had also visited the Genocide Museum during this year. Around seventy official delegations of different foreign countries had visited the museum.
At the end of the press-release AGMI Director Hayk Demoyan answered the questions of the journalists and presented the upcoming plans. AGMI projects will not end with 2015, there are new initiatives inspired by the success of 2015. In the near future permanent and temporary exhibitions will be organized in Russia, Baltic States.