A Museum of Their Own: The Prolific Bedoukian Collection

The Armenian Museum of America has had many generous collections donors over the years, but perhaps none as committed to the development and mission of the Museum as Dr. Paul and Vicki Bedoukian. Their indomitable drive to collect artifacts of Armenian culture and ultimately donate them to the Museum is a testament to the value they placed on preserving and collecting these pieces for posterity. 

The couple was introduced to the Museum by the late Founder and Chairman Haig Der Manuelian, himself a tireless and passionate advocate and collector of Armenian artifacts. In its early period of growth, Mr. Der Manuelian convinced the Bedoukians that the Museum in Watertown was the only place where their collection would receive the care and attention it deserved. His success in acquiring the Bedoukian donation put the Armenian Museum on the map as a major repository for Armenian collections and studies. 

Dr. Paul Bedoukian was born in Sivas in 1912. His family’s grueling experiences during the Armenian Genocide of 1915 are recounted in his brother Kerob’s biography Some of Us Survived. Bedoukian lost his father, a sister and brother, but survived the deportations and immigrated to Canada, where he attended McGill University and received his doctorate in organic chemistry in 1942. He married Victoria Hagopian in 1945 and moved to New York. 

His chemistry research focused on perfume, and he became an authority in his field. His textbook Perfumery and Flavoring Synthetics became the standard text of the flavor industry and Bedoukian Research, Inc. is a leader in the manufacture of the ingredients used in modern perfumes and foods. 

Bedoukian was also the world’s foremost authority on the coinage of Cilician Armenia. His extensive study of Armenian coinage and academic publications in the field established Armenian Numismatics as a major discipline in its own right. His writings include Coinage of Cilician Armenia, Roman Coins Related to Armenia, Medieval Armenian Coins, and Coinage of the Artaxiads of Armenia, which were some of our library’s first acquisitions. 

“We Armenians have a hundred churches in America, but not a single major museum or library,” said Dr. Bedoukian prophetically in the 1970s. “It is important to have a center where we can display the products of our 3,000 year history: future generations will be grateful to the Museum for making it possible to see and understand their roots.”

With remarkable prescience, Dr. Bedoukian and his wife Victoria, a noted collector of American glass, bestowed to the Museum the magnificent Paul and Vicki Bedoukian Collection of Armenian Antiquities comprising of more than 6,000 items in 1986. It is the Museum’s major, pivotal collection and includes ancient coins, stamps, seals, religious works, maps, early printings, illuminations, Urartian artifacts, metalwork, ceramics, rugs, and other textiles the couple had collected over 60 years. 

Additionally, Dr. Bedoukian served on the Museum’s Board of Trustees for many years, while Mrs. Bedoukian bequeathed her American glass collection to the Museum authorizing that it be sold and the proceeds used to further the Museum’s mission.

The Bedoukian passion for preserving Armenian culture continues through the couple’s son and daughter-in-law, Dr. Robert and Gail Bedoukian. In 2000, Robert and Gail donated to the Museum the Bedoukian Coin and Library Collection consisting of 4,300 Armenian coins and a selection of rare books. Like his father, Robert too has served on the Museum’s Board for many years. 

Please click through the slideshow to see a sampling of the Bedoukian Collection, which spans nearly the entire history of the Armenian people, dating back to Urartu to the more recent Soviet and independent past. 

Captions are available by hovering your cursor over the images. 

Introductory text by Curator Gary Lind-Sinanian and Collections Manager Zoe Quinn. Object decriptions by Dr. Alisa Dumikyan, the Museum’s Visiting Scholar and Curator Gary Lind-Sinanian.