Grandfather in a suit, Grandmother wearing her church dress, harried Mother and overexcited Children wait as Father reads from his phone and proudly translates for them about an Armenian Gospels, a “Breath of God,” that they have come to see. They board the tram that takes visitors up the Santa Monica Mountains to the Getty Center. It resembles a gleaming white citadel of art. The intricately landscaped grounds include carefully staged, expansive views of Los Angeles: the Pacific Ocean, the mountains, the throbbing pulse of the freeways.
The Armenian family finds a Russian-speaking docent who takes them to the North Hall, which displays medieval art. Manuscripts are sensitive to light and use, so they can only be on view for brief spells. The Canon Tables can only be shown one bifolium at a time. Curators craft special exhibitions that tell many different stories around the Canon Tables and other carefully selected objects. One exhibition presents the diversity of pious expression in Christian imagery. Another clarifies the place of Roslin’s artistry within the continuum of Armenian and Byzantine art. Yet another deploys the Canon Tables in an exploration of medieval illumination around the globe, emphasizing cultural encounters, exchanges, and dialogs.
The Armenian family gathers around the Canon Tables, gazing at it reverently. Having made a pilgrimage up the hill to see a sacred relic, the family members find the holy pages. But within them they also discover a work of art, beautifully protected and displayed for the appreciation and admiration of all. They now share their sacred treasure with the public. But they also partake of other sacred relics from other times and places. Soon, they drift toward a nearby Coptic Bible, an enameled glass pilgrim flask, or an exquisite altarpiece from Siena. They are proud to see “their” sacred pages alongside so many wonders.
People describe the art in the Getty galleries as a “collection of masterpieces,” and it is no hyperbole. Even though only a fraction of the vast collection can come on display at any one time, every hall features arresting works of art representing the very best of their kind. Changing exhibitions tell innovative stories about the individual artifacts, highlight connections between them, and communicate the latest scholarly research to the public. Admission to the Getty has always been free of charge—except for parking; this is Los Angeles after all. The wealthiest art institution in the world, the Getty has attracted its share of criticism about its collection, its management practices, its outreach, its architecture, even the flowers in its gardens. And some of it is no doubt on target. Nevertheless, in the relatively short time since its establishment in 1954 it has secured a place as one of the world’s most important museums and centers for research, conservation, and curatorial innovation.
The settlement between the Western Prelacy and the Getty ensured that the Canon Tables will remain in Los Angeles. At the Getty Museum, the widest public can see the Canon Tables embedded in the narrative arcs of diverse and thoughtful exhibitions. Each viewer lives his or her own experience of a work of art on display every time he or she sees it. Each viewing offers the potential of an experience of the artwork, brief or sustained, careful or distracted, rewarding or disappointing. At the Getty, the Canon Tables plays its assigned role as a work of art. Perhaps it continues to play its old roles as well: protecting the people, embodying their memory, interceding with God.
The settlement constituted a successful example where thoughtful negotiation resulted in agreement. Such contests over art, and demands for repatriation and restitution, have become increasingly common in the cultural landscape of our time and have transformed the art world. The Canon Tables settlement certainly provides a precedent or model for other, similar disputes. Yet questions remain. The settlement resolved issues related to the past, but it did not result in a return to the past. The Canon Tables will not rejoin the mother manuscript. Rather, the settlement is forward-looking.
The Canon Tables in Los Angeles and the mother manuscript in Yerevan are survivor objects that emerged transformed by a century of trauma and exile. These experiences not only transformed the Zeytun Gospels itself in its materiality—cleaving it into two, the fragment and the mother manuscript. The experiences also transformed the object’s function and meaning in the world. Thus the mother manuscript and its Canon Tables went from being a single sacred relic and liturgical object in a remote town to two works of art displayed to the public in museums, their likeness endlessly reproduced through digital technology.
For every Canon Tables that survives and remakes itself in a new setting, thousands of artworks and sacred objects are destroyed or lost. As the destruction, looting, and trafficking of art continue throughout the world, it is sobering to recall that for most assaults on culture there will be no reckoning and no restitution. Despite the best efforts of defenders of cultural heritage, the good intentions of law enforcement, and the creative work of legal experts, things will not be made whole again. Survivor objects evince an intense connection to the past. Their material presence can remind and connect the viewer to absent objects and places. Survivor objects exemplify the ever-changing, dynamic nature of cultural heritage. Even objects that bear the scars of the violence committed upon them—fragmented, mutilated, decayed, even illegible—symbolize resilience, and they face forward. Future viewers will read into them what they will
. . .
In the exhibition hall full of priceless manuscripts, the Canon Tables of the Zeytun Gospels exerted its attraction on me. Mesmerized, I lost track of time. I found I could not walk away from the illuminated artwork. I stood taking in its glow, its quiet golden glimmer. In the pages’ small expanse, under the ornate architectural frame, I continually found countless new visual events. Behind me, visitors came and went, Angelenos on their Sunday outings, students gathering materials for term papers. An older man addressed me brusquely, demanding to know in English, Are you Armenian? I answered in Armenian, ayo, yes.
There and then, unprompted, he told me the story of his grandparents’ odyssey from Anatolia to America. The tale was familiar. He demanded, Urdeghatsi es? Where are you from? I recognized he wanted to know not where I was born, but where my people were from in old Armenia and the places where they had taken refuge after the Medz Yeghern. His eyes twinkled with recognition at the place names I recited like incantations: Musa Dagh, Tokat, Agn, Çanakkale, Istanbul, Port Said, Cairo, Aleppo, Ainjar, Beirut. Just as abruptly he moved on. He did not tell me his name. Nor did he need to. The Canon Tables had projected a space where two Armenians connected through their one common experience, whose painful, perhaps cathartic, repetition is a feature of our identity: exile, genocide, pain, loss, unanswered questions, and violence without resolution, responsibility, or restitution. Uprooted from places to which no return seems possible, from life-worlds that have been wiped out. Adapted to new settings and new roles, yet marked by the past. The Canon Tables’ own history mirrored our stories.