Armenian Museums and Exhibition Centers in Moscow: Strategies of Representation and Commemorative Practices

The article undertakes a comparative analysis of the features of the representation of the collective memory of the Armenian diaspora in Russia in Armenian museums and exhibition centers in Moscow. The constructivist methodology of our study indicated to us that the representation of the diasporas past in a museum, explicitly or implicitly, is a combination of the memory politics of the host society, the country of origin, and the diaspora itself. In the context of the transformation of new museology from museum epistemology to the politics of affect, we selected a number of concepts and categories that reflect not only the cognitive status of museification practices, but also the possibilities of its direct emotional impact: the main idea of the exposition, the categories of “center” and “periphery”, cognitive and emotional components, the depth and surface of discursive and visual strategies. We were also interested in the perspective of the subject of museum narrative and exhibiting in the context of criticism of the paradigm of methodological nationalism in contemporary museums. A comparative analysis of the features of museification and exhibiting practices clearly indicates a wide range of possibilities for representing Armenian culture in Moscow, where Armenian museums, the Armenia pavilion at Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNH), and the Armenian Language and Culture Center complement each other, emphasizing different aspects of Armenian culture. However, despite significant differences in the concepts of museification and the combination of discursive and affective elements, all the institutions we analyzed turned out to be focused on representing Armenian culture as the culture of the country of origin, practically not covering the issues of the Armenian diaspora in Russia. It was revealed that the representation of Armenian culture in museification and exhibiting practices continues to reproduce the mythology of Armenia as a “distant historical homeland” and ancient Christian culture, as well as a sacrificial historical narrative, where the key event in Armenian history is the 1915 genocide.