About a month after the visit of U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance to the Armenian Genocide Memorial Complex, the director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, Edita Gzoyan, is leaving her post, so far without any public explanation for the decision. Armenian authorities, who are very cautious about publicly mentioning anything related to Artsakh amid the ongoing normalization process with Azerbaijan and act as if the topic is closed, reportedly reacted strongly after museum director Edita Gzoyan spoke about Artsakh during U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s visit.
On Wednesday, the Institute confirmed to Armenpress that Gzoyan had submitted a resignation letter, but that the resignation had not yet been accepted. No official information has been released regarding Gzoyan’s departure. Museum employees say they were informed that the Ministry of Education had pressured Gzoyan to submit a resignation.
A few days earlier, all 74 employees of the museum had appealed to the Prime Minister, hoping the decision would be reconsidered.
“This was the first time in our museum’s history that all employees, without exception, collectively addressed a higher authority on the same issue,” said Mihran Minasyan, adviser to the director, in an interview with Radio Liberty.
Former museum employee Hayk Martirosyan, who worked there from 2006–2014, also commented on the matter in a social media post, mentioning Gzoyan’s achievements and the unprecedented productivity and positive atmosphere at the museum during her tenure.
According to Martirosyan, the past two years under Gzoyan were among the “most productive in the museum’s history”.
In June 2025, the International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies was officially indexed in Scopus, one of the world’s most prestigious academic databases.
Martirosyan questioned the rationale for her removal, emphasizing Gzoyan’s high scholarly output and active engagement with diaspora experts.
He pointed out that the resignation of two diaspora scholars on the Board of Trustees, Raymond Kévorkian and Stepan Astourian, along with two other Armenian scholars, Hranush Kharatyan and Harutyun Marutyan, reflects clear disagreement with the decision to replace her.
On the management side, he also highlighted the unified letter sent by all 74 museum employees attempting to prevent the director’s dismissal, calling the solidarity and positive atmosphere under Gzoyan unprecedented in the museum’s history.
Officials at the museum stressed that, despite frequent government rhetoric on the need to internationalize science, the decision to remove a highly respected scholar like Gzoyan was a blow to morale. Suren Manukyan, head of a department at the museum, said: “We expected our director to be rewarded for her good work. This is a matter of justice.”
When asked whether any explanation had been provided, Manukyan replied: “They tell us it is related to construction issues, but it sounds somewhat unserious.”
Employees are puzzled about what scientists have to do with construction matters. The ministry announced a tender, selected a construction company, and oversight bodies are in place. Adviser Mihran Movsisyan suggested that construction might be only a pretext, and that the real reason behind the pressure on Gzoyan is something else.
A scandal over careless construction work at the Genocide Memorial Complex erupted late last summer. However, the Minister of Education never indicated that the director was responsible. There is, however, an interesting detail: Education Minister Zhanna Andreasyan regularly visited the site to monitor construction and shared photos of her visits. In those photos, Gzoyan was always present beside the minister.
Since Vance’s visit, however, Gzoyan has no longer appeared beside the minister. Photos from the visit showed that Andreasyan greeted Vance and his wife upon arrival at the memorial complex, but did not accompany them during the walk through the memorial, which was instead led by Gzoyan.
As they passed the khachkars(cross stones) commemorating the victims of the Sumgait, Baku, and Kirovabad pogroms, Gzoyan spoke about those bloody events as well as the Artsakh war, and presented the guests with books about the Artsakh issue and the Armenian Genocide. Notably, in the museum’s official statement about the visit, the term “Artsakh” was used instead of “Nagorno-Karabakh,” which Armenian officials have recently tended to use.
Whether the forced resignation is connected to Vance’s visit remains uncertain, and museum employees say they cannot state this definitively.
The Ministry of Education hasn’t provided any explanation on this issue yet.
