A global fundraising campaign has officially launched to support the creation of the Richard G. Hovannisian Library in the heart of Yerevan. Dedicated to honoring and extending the monumental legacy of the late Professor Hovannisian, a titan of modern Armenian history, the library will permanently house the unparalleled collection of more than 10,000 books and volumes he amassed over his lifetime, and it is envisioned as an enduring intellectual sanctuary for the Armenian nation.
The scope of what is being preserved is difficult to overstate. Born to Armenian Genocide survivors in California’s San Joaquin Valley in 1932, Hovannisian set out on a life’s journey to pioneer the field of Armenian Studies in the United States and across the world. He joined the faculty at UCLA in the early 1960s, developed the university’s Armenian history curriculum, and founded and held the AEF Chair in Modern Armenian History, later renamed in his honor. Over more than half a century of teaching he trained generations of scholars and helped found the Society for Armenian Studies, transforming a subject that had little academic footing in the West into a recognized field of serious inquiry.
His written legacy is the foundation on which much of that field now rests. He wrote the four-volume masterpiece “The Republic of Armenia,” the definitive history of the short-lived First Republic of 1918 to 1920, a work that secured the place of that fragile state in both Armenian and world history. He preserved the history of the Armenian Genocide through several more books and a comprehensive oral history collection, which now resides at USC’s Shoah Foundation, capturing the testimony of survivors before their voices were lost. His series of conferences on the historic Armenian cities and provinces also became books, wherein the lost history, culture, and spirit of Western Armenia are forever preserved. He passed away in Los Angeles in July 2023 at the age of 90.
The Richard G. Hovannisian Library is envisaged as a world-class cultural and intellectual space worthy of that legacy. Work is already well underway on the ground in Yerevan, where specialists and catalogers are meticulously indexing the vast archival collection. By the end of this year, these volumes will be integrated into a beautifully designed facility featuring custom, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The space will serve as a dynamic center for the study and advancement of Armenian and regional studies, inspiring a new generation of scholars, thinkers, and leaders through a year-round calendar of panels, symposia, and educational programming.
While the Hovannisian family, together with several allied Armenian institutions, has borne the lion’s share of the initial project and construction costs, a global campaign has been launched to bring this history-in-the-making across the finish line, funding the final outfitting of the space, ongoing archival work, and future programming. The project is being implemented on the ground in Yerevan by Creative Armenia.
“We hope to build, in my grandfather’s name, a library that will not only perpetuate his legacy, but that will allow new generations of Armenians to discover the riches of our past and to be inspired and propelled toward our future,” said Garin Hovannisian, Founder of Creative Armenia.
The undertaking speaks to a quiet but consequential truth about national survival. A people whose history has so often been targeted for erasure secures its future in part by safeguarding its past, and a library of this kind is an act of preservation as much as it is an act of scholarship. For a man who spent his life ensuring that the Armenian story would be written down, remembered, and taught, there could be few more fitting tributes than a permanent home in Yerevan where that work continues.
Those wishing to make a tax-deductible contribution to the campaign can do so through the official donation portal at creativearmenia.org/library.
