July 6, 2018

                                                                        Contact Information:

                                                                        Lusine Avagyan, Project Manager, EPF

                                                                                                +37493 434017; [email protected]

Yerevan, Armenia – on July 11, 2018, at 17:00, the "Poetry of Stones, Ani" Exhibition will open at the National Museum-Institute of Architecture, Trdat Hall.

Opening remarks and welcome will be delivered by: 

• Anush Ter-Minasyan, Director of the National Museum-Institute of Architecture
• Gregory Tsouris, Deputy Head of Cooperation Section, European Union Delegation to the Republic of Armenia
• Yavuz Özkaya, Restoration Architect / Chair of the Association for the Protection of Cultural Heritage
• Carsten Paludan-Müller, Former Director of NIKU, Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research
• Armen Kazaryan, Director of the Scientific Research Institute of Theory and History of Architecture and Urban Planning, Russian Federation

The opening will last for about 30 minutes, and it will be open for press. Consecutive English-Armenian-English translation will be provided during the event. 

The Exhibition reflects the joint efforts of experts from Armenia and Turkey to save the architectural heritage inside and around the ancient city of Ani that was included on the World Heritage list in 2016. 

The hosts of today’s event are the Turkey-based Anadolu Kültür and the Armenia-based Eurasia Partnership Foundation. This exhibition is made possible with the collaboration of Anadolu Kültür, Eurasia Partnership Foundation and Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research. Both the preparatory phase and the production phase of the exhibition involved the collaborative work of a team of experts and photographers from Turkey and Armenia.

Since 2013, the Turkey-based Anadolu Kültür closely collaborated with the World Monuments Fund (WMF) and the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) to assess the current conditions, the significance and preservation potential of the Armenian cultural heritage in Turkey, with a particular focus on Ani.

In fall 2013, a highly representative group of architects, restoration specialists, historians, ethnographers and art historians from Armenia, Turkey, Russia, USA, France and Norway visited Ani and explored the cultural heritage sites through a number of expert lenses and thus developed a richer and more comprehensive understanding of the architectural heritage of the region. Today’s exhibition is a direct result of these efforts.

As also stated by UNESCO, cultural heritage belongs to humanity; therefore, it is one of the fields that necessitates and enables the utmost cooperation, dialogue, and understanding among countries. In this regard, with its history, geographical location, and architectural features, Ani constitutes a significant cultural asset that will serve the enhancement of the dialogue between Turkey and Armenia. The exhibition is intended both as an example of and an encouragement to such a cooperation.

Since 2014, the EU-funded ‘Support to the Armenia-Turkey Normalization Process’ programme actively endorsed these efforts, and in addition to Ani, a similar exploration of the Armenian cultural heritage was conducted in the regions of Mush and Artvin, in 2014 and 2016 respectively.

This activity takes place within the framework of the “Support to the Armenia-Turkey Normalization Process” programme, funded by the European Union and the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.