Photo by George Bouret
Article by Hrag Vartanian
In the Armenian Museum of America, there’s a curious collection of dioramas that might represent one of the most unique forms of Armenian-American folk art. On the first floor of the Watertown, Massachusetts-based museum is a small model of a home from the now-gone town of Hussenig, which was once located in the province of Kharpert (Harput) during the time of the Ottoman Empire.
The model was made by an elderly man from Yerevan, Armenia, named Haji-Hagopian, who arrived in the United States in 1990 and went to a dentist named Martin Deranian. During their appointment, the doctor started talking about his famous uncle Hagop Bogigian, and the name rang a bell for the visitor. It turned out Bogigian’s family had helped Haji-Hagopian’s father during the Armenian Genocide.
Deranian pounced on his guest’s words and asked him if he remembered the family’s home. Haji-Hagopian joked that he couldn’t even remember what he ate that day, but he remembered that house. He would eventually be convinced to recreate the home from memory with the help of another man. Together they created a model replica, which continues to be proudly displayed in the museum, serving as a monument to a place that no longer exists.
The diorama, which is one of five in the museum’s collection, demonstrates a unique type of folk art that only appears to exist in the United States. Some were made by the immigrants themselves, while others were commissioned to be made by compatriots to help survivors feel closer to their lost homes.
Curator Gary Lind-Sinanian suggests that their creation might also have to do with the long tradition of building models of Armenian churches, many of which are also in AMA’s collection. He also wonders if similar regional dioramas, such as more well-known examples at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, might have inspired them.
Visitors to the Peabody encounter dioramas which offer glimpses not only of natural scenes, but also of traditional scenes of Native American culture. The dioramas in AMA’s collection certainly evoke the style, scale, and manner of the Native American exhibits at the Peabody. Why the makers may have emulated those models remains a mystery, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine they felt a personal connection with the scenes of idealized Indigenous life, before the violence of colonization and removal.
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