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Notes on Lucy Der Manuelian

• Name:		Lucy Der Manuelian
  Title:		Arthur H. Dadian and Ara Oztemel Professor of Armenian Art and Archutectural History Adjunct
  Departmental Affiliation:		Art & Art History Department
  Degrees:		Ph.D. Boston University, M.A. Boston University, B.A. Radcliffe College, Fellow, Radcliffe College Bunting Institute
  Expertise:		Medieval Art, Armor and Architecture
  E-mail:		lmanueli@emerald.tufts.edu
  Other websites:		http://ase.tufts.edu/art/facultybios.html#anchor1357364
  Scholarship & Research:		"Armenian Architecture," V.L. Parsegian, Project Director; K. Maksoudian, Ed.; L. Der Manuelian, Texts for Volume I, II, III. Coauthor, Volume IV, Zug, 1981-1987. L. Der Manuelian and M. Eiland, "Weavers, Merchants and Kings: The Inscribed Rugs of Armenia," Kimbell Art Museum Exhibition, October-December, 1984, Fort Worth, 1984. "The Gregorian Collection - Armenian Rugs." University of Michigan Exhibition, Rackman Galleries, February 4-18, Ann Arbor, 1983. "Dictionary of the Middle Ages," New York, 1982-1989. Major articles on Armenian art and architecture. Der Manuelian,Lucy (Art & Art History Department)

• Dr. Der Manuelian has been a member of the Tufts faculty since 1984 when she was appointed to the Lectureship in Armenian Art and Architecture. In 1989 she was appointed to the Dadian/Oztemel Professorship, the first endowed professorship in the field ever established at a University. Dr. Der Manuelian received her B.A. degree from Radcliffe College and the Ph.D. degree in Art History from Boston University in 1980. She is the author of three volumes on Armenian architecture, as well as of numerous other publications. She has written and narrated three television documentaries on Armenian art, has appeared on several radio and television news programs, including the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour and has given over 500 public talks on the subject of Armenian Art and Architecture. She is listed in several Who's Who catalogues, including the Who's Who of Women and the Who's Who of American Women. Austin - Lucy Der Manuelian
• Radcliffe Quarterly: Tracking the Lost Treasures of Armenia
• Der Manuelian, L. and M. Eiland: Weavers, Merchants and Kings, Inscribed Rugs from Armenia ; Ft. Worth: 1984.
• Der Manuelian, Lucy, Armenian Rugs, University of Michigan, 1983.
• The following is excerpted from the "Chronicle of Higher Education" February 16, 1996, where it is published under the title "Crusader for a Nearly Lost Culture." The author is Christopher Shea; the article includes a photograph.

  
  As an art historian who has studied ruins in remote areas of Armenia for 25 years, Lucy Der Manuelian is used to apartments that lack heat, runarounds by state officials, and lots of nighmarish driving.
  
  She is expecially fond of anecdotes in the last category. In 1988, the Tufts University scholar traveled by jeep to a monastery three hours south of Yerevan, Armenia's capital. She wanted to see whether what remained of the structure, perched atop a mountain, matched the thirteenth-century descriptions of an academy for Armenian scholars..."Whenever there was a rise in front of us, the driver would gun the accelorator, but you didn't know if there'd be a turn to the left, or the right, or if there'd be a road at all." ...
  It's not suprising that Ms. Der Manuelian is an engaging storyteller, because she is not merely a respected scholar of Armenian sculptures, manuscripts, and architecture. She is also a proselytizer for all of Armenian culture. The first American to receive a doctorate in Armenian art hsitory, in 1980, she has become a public intellectual with a tiny niche, lecturing to college audiences and Armenian groups in this country and abroad...
  
  In retrospect, Ms. Der Manuelian's career seems to have been foreordained. Her grandfather disappeared during the genocide. Her mother fled Armenia during the massacres. Ms. Der Manuelian's godfather, an Armenian artist whom her father met in New York...painted delicate watercolors of the architectural monuments of Armenia, which were exhibited in London and Paris...After graduating from Radcliffe College in 1950, however, Ms. Der Manuelian opted for a life as a housewife, raising two boys. She audited courses at Harvard and then, when her marriage broke up, enrolled in Boston University's graduate program.
  
  Oleg Grabar, her thesis advisor, says, "She has a gutsiness that is quite admirable."
  
  Both she and Mr. Grabar knew Armenian art history was a field that many universities would consider too narrow to support by themselves. the two of them concocted the idea of a chair in Armenian art history, financed by outside contributors, that would rotate among several institutions in the Boston area.
  
  She taught for several years at Harvard, Boston, and Northeastern Universities and other local institutions, until two donors made possible the creation of a permanent chair at Tufts, in 1989. Now she teaches two courses a year on Armenian art and history, which attract a dozen or so students each, plus broader courses on art and politics in the Middle Ages.
  
  Ms. Der Manuelian's latest project is a documentary about the architecture and history of Armenia. Lucy Der Manualian

• Tuftonia Magazine Online

For Further Reading:

Thanks and best wishes,

J. Barry O'Connell Jr.

Index to JBOC's Rug Notes

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