Book Lecture in Watertown on ‘The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript’

Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh, Professor of Art History at the University of California-Davis, will be speaking about her recently published book The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript, from Genocide to Justice at the AGBU New England Center on Wednesday, February 27, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. The event is co-sponsored by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and the Armenian Museum of America. The Missing Pages (Stanford Univ. Press, 2019) is the biography of the Zeytun Gospels, a manuscript illuminated by the greatest medieval Armenian artist, Toros Roslin, and which is at once art, sacred object, and cultural heritage. Its tale mirrors the story of its scattered community as Armenians have struggled to redefine themselves after genocide and in the absence of a homeland. Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh follows in the manuscript’s footsteps through seven centuries, from medieval Armenia to the killing fields of 1915, the refugee camps of Aleppo, Ellis Island, Soviet Armenia, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and ultimately to a Los Angeles courtroom. Reconstructing the path of the pages, Watenpaugh uncovers the rich tapestry of an extraordinary artwork and the people touched by it. At once a story of genocide and survival, of unimaginable loss and resilience, The Missing Pages captures the human costs of war and persuasively makes the case for a human right to art. Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh is . She is the award-winning author of The Image of an Ottoman City: Architecture in Aleppo (2004). Her writing has also appeared in the Huffington Post and the Los Angeles Times. This event is free and open to the public. A reception and refreshments will take place before and after the program. For more information about this program, contact NAASR at 617-489-1610 or hq@naasr.org. The AGBU New England Center is located at 247 Mt. Auburn St., Watertown, Mass.