«Երուսաղեմ. վավերացնել հայկական ներկայությունը» - Նուրիտ ԿԵՆԱԱՆ-ՔԵԴԱՐ

The article by Nurith Kenaan-Kedar, "Jerusalem: Bearing Witness to the Armenian Presence," is devoted to the personal and scholarly experience of the Israeli art historian, author of long-standing research into the Armenian artistic heritage of Jerusalem.

Biographical and Intellectual Context

The author presents her own family history as the foundation of her multicultural worldview:

the family's roots go back to settlers from Kherson (1906), founders of Tel Aviv;
her mother, raised in the spirit of Tolstoyism, was fluent in Arabic and, from the 1930s, maintained contacts with Armenian ceramic masters;
her father, a professor of medicine, emigrated from Germany in 1933.

Her education, received at the University of Basel (Switzerland), combined a deep knowledge of the Bible, Russian classical literature, and music, which shaped the researcher's broad cultural outlook.

Key Thesis: Melisende as Patroness of Armenian Art

While studying Crusader art in twelfth-century Jerusalem, the author discovered that the role of Queen Melisende as a patroness specifically of Armenian architecture and art had been underestimated — a function that researchers had traditionally dissolved into the general context of royal patronage of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Armenian Ceramics as a Form of National Identification

The article's central thesis concerns understanding Jerusalem's Armenian ceramics as:

a means of artistic self-expression for the masters;
a form of asserting belonging to the city;
testimony to the continuous Armenian presence.

The author raises the problem of the appropriation of national minority art by state institutions, noting that the Armenian artists of Jerusalem avoided such a fate, yet remained in the shadow of scholarly attention due to their non-involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Practical Activity

As a curator and public figure, Kenaan-Kedar initiated:

the creation of a municipal panel of 1,000 ceramic tiles, "A Glimpse of Paradise," by Marie Balian;
the exhibition "Birds of Paradise" at the Eretz Israel Museum;
the issuance of a philatelic series dedicated to the Armenian ceramicists of Jerusalem;
the publication of three books on twentieth-century Armenian ceramics.

Conclusion

The article asserts the necessity of a systematic study of the Armenian artistic heritage of Jerusalem — both the medieval monastic complex and the painting of the Armenian churches of the nineteenth century — as a full-fledged and independent object of art-historical analysis, bearing witness to the continuity of the Armenian presence in the cultural life of the city.