Examples of Armenian janyak lacework made by genocide survivor Marie Pilibossian are on exhibit at UCLA's Fowler Museum until October 15. Admission is free. The museum is at 308 Charles E. Young Drive, Los Angeles. It is open Wednesday through Sunday, from noon to 5 p.m.
The exhibition Janyak: Armenian Art of Knots and Loops features 14 doilies created by Polibossian and donated to the museum in 1980. Polibossian was born in Turkey in 1898, 17 years before the start of the Armenian genocide. She died in Los Angeles in 1986.
The exhibition has been curated by Gassia Armenian, research associate at the museum. She will give a lecture on the history of Armenian needle lace at the museum on May 31 at 12:30 p.m. She is expected to discuss how janyak, as a "portable and enduring art form passed from mother to daughter," has helped enable Armenian Americans to maintain cultural links to Armenia and the Armenian diaspora. Admission is free. Reservations can be made via Eventbrite.
Sofi Khachmanyan, a textile artist and professor at Santa Monica College, will conduct a free hands-on workshop on janyak at the museum on May 21 at 2:00 p.m. Tickets to the workshop can be obtained at Eventbrite. Khachmanyan studied lace making in Armenia before coming to the United States in 1988.
There is a YouTube channel with 59 videos showing how to make Armenian needle lace.
Henry Morgenthau Sr. was U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time of the Armenian genocide, which he described in his book Ambassador Morgenthau's Story. The book can be downloaded at the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg. An audio version is available at Librivox.
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