The Alexander Tamanyan National Museum-Institute of Architecture has temporarily “sheltered” evacuated artifacts from the Shushi Carpet Museum that date back to the 17th-20th centuries. The Shushi Carpet Museum was founded in 2011. On September 2, it turned 10 years old. The founder of the Shushi Carpet Museum, Vardan Astsatryan, who saved the samples that include the museum’s permanent exhibition, said in a conversation with Aravot Daily, “The Shushi Carpet Museum is 10 years old. In these conditions, I was wondering whether it was worth mentioning or not, but when a week ago the President of Azerbaijan and his wife opened a carpet exhibition in the museum hall, I decided that the 10th anniversary of our museum should be celebrated.
The Azeris, according to their habit of appropriating the culture of others, came and established a museum on the finished museum. The carpets saved from February 20 are at the Tamanyan Museum of Architecture, and we still do not know exactly what will happen in the future. We are here now until there is a constructive proposal or a solution from the state.”
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We learned from Vardan Astsatryan that the oldest carpet is from the 17th century, and in general, the carpets date from the 17th century to the end of the 19th century. “There are 120 carpets left, but we have removed the most important carpets, the remaining carpets were looted by Azerbaijani soldiers… In general, they had a state program to appropriate Armenian culture since the 1960s. The Azeris toured all the villages of Artsakh, bought, or exchanged old Armenian carpets, and the same happened in Armenia. Our government has never dealt with it because it was ours, they thought it would always be ours, but we must take the seriousness of the moment to understand that they finally want to take that culture with them. There must be a political decision by the leadership on this issue. Otherwise, we will lose everything, because they have already established a museum in our museum.”
We asked Vardan Astsatryan if he had been offered by the private sector to help him with the museum area. “It looks like an inspection is going on, some people are being sent and they are monitoring the situation, but I have not seen any constructive steps. Everything is still on the level of discussions. Moreover, in order to create a carpet museum in Shushi, no large investments are needed. It is a ready-made museum; the issue of the building must be solved. It may be a lot of money for an ordinary person, but not so much for a museum. All the same, the state will not be able to create such a thing because we bought these carpets from the villages that we have already lost. We have a record of which carpet is from which village. Even if they buy such carpets from the market, they will spend 10 times more, and this way everything is already done.”
The founder of the Shushi Carpet Museum emphasizes that so far no one from the Artsakh government nor the Artsakh representation has visited the museum. Only a minister from Artsakh visited 6 months ago. No one from the Ministry of Education and Science of Armenia visited, either.
Gohar Hakobyan
Photos by the author
