04.06.2022


The AGMI hosted a lecture given by Stacey Worster, Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. in its conference hall on May 31 titled “Legends of the Artefacts: Object-Centric Research, Education and Public Engagement.”

Stacey Worster is from South Africa and studied art history at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. From 2012-2016 she worked as a curator of the Republic of South Africa’s Constitutional Court’s collection, then continued her studies at the University of Amsterdam, where she now works.

She began her lecture with the following questions: can we form an idea of the past through individual objects? What is the role of an individual object in the preservation and transmission of the heritage of the past? In her lecture she said that initial object-oriented research was carried out in one of the museums of Johannesburg, which has a collection of more than ten thousand objects. She and her colleagues began to study individual objects in an attempt to uncover their entire history, making it accessible to the general public through scholarly articles, picture books, and exhibitions. She noted that one historical object may be more eloquent and impressive than any article or book. During the lecture, Stacey shared her years of experience which will be used by AGMI staff in their future research.

We witnessed the important role of a certain object in the preservation and transmission of the memory of a historical memorable event during the lecture: at the end of it, journalist Haykaram Nahapetyan, a Turkologist who was present, presented the Armenian Genocide Museum with a copy of the American journalist Louis Lochner’s book “What About Germany?”, the second page of which quotes Hitler’s famous words: “… and who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”