Birth of Manya Ghazaryan (January 20, 1924)

Manya Ghazaryan, a prolific art historian, was born on January 20, 1924, in Tbilisi (Georgia). She graduated from the Institute of Art and Theater of Yerevan (now Academy of Fine Arts) in 1948. She worked at the National Gallery of Art of Armenia between 1953 and 1959, and afterwards became a researcher at the Institute of Art of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1983 she earned the title of Emeritus Worker of Art of Armenia, and in 1996 she defended her dissertation of Ph.D. in Art.   

Manya Ghazaryan’s studies were devoted to plastic arts in the Middle Ages, and the modern and contemporary periods. She authored the following books in Armenian: Vardges Sureniants (1960), Armenian Plastic Arts in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1974), Grigor Khanjian (1978), The Artistic Wood Engraving in Armenia (1989), and The Treasures of the Art of Artsakh (1993). The latter was published in Antelias in Armenian, English, and French. She also published The Hovnatanian Painters (1968) and Visual Arts of Soviet Armenia (1978) in Russian, Painting in New Julfa in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1985) in Farsi, and the album Armenian Rug (1988) in Armenian and English. 

She was also the compiler and editor of the catalogues of the museum of Holy Echmiadzin, the Mekhitarist monastery in St. Lazarus, the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia, the Zarehian Museum of Aleppo, and the Alex and Marie Manoogian Museum of Detroit. 

Manya Ghazaryan passed away on March 8, 1998, in Yerevan.