Elena Tsikhon's exhibition opened a little earlier - on January 17 - and combines the author's photographs and a soundtrack, which is based on the themes of the works of the great composers of Finland and Norway - Sibelius and Grieg. The idea of this exposition was born by David Sargsyan back in 2004, he also came up with the musical accompaniment for the photo sequence and the name for the exhibition. Elena Tsikhon recalls that she received a short SMS with the words “North for me” from David in December 2009, but then they didn’t have time to open the exhibition … The pictures of “northern melancholy” - the sights of Karelia, Vyborg and Oslo - are the best look exactly in a cold ruin, will be on display until February 19.
The book about David Sargsyan was compiled by the renowned architectural critic and curator Elena Gonzalez. As Irina Korobyina, the current director of MuAra, said at the memorial evening, the museum received a grant for a book from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation a long time ago, but due to a number of bureaucratic delays, they could not use it. Therefore, the book was prepared and published entirely with the money of MuAr. It was designed by Maxim Spivakov, and the cover was designed with a fuzzy portrait of David - the out of focus photo symbolizes our memory of the former director of the museum, gradually blurring his image.
Elena Gonzalez worked on this publication for two years: she selected texts that were written by David's friends and colleagues, and photographs that were given by his relatives and acquaintances. With great effort, she managed to bring them together and tell about David not linearly and not boringly - but in the way he himself would like. However, the compiler herself admits that the book contains only a part of what can be told about Sargsyan, and very much hopes that over time there will be publications devoted to other spheres of his multifaceted life. Indeed, before becoming the director of Muara, David managed to invent a medicine used in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, made several films and worked as a film critic.
Much was also said at the memorial evening about how David Sargsyan, a man formally completely far from architecture, became the director of the museum. Someone is inclined to attribute this to "pure chance", but Anvar Shamuzafarov, the then head of the State Construction Committee of the Russian Federation, who appointed him to this position, had very clear motives. Once he saw the film "Anna Karamazoff", which Sargsyan shot together with Rustam Khamdamov, and he was struck by how subtly David understands the space of architecture, how in a completely unexpected way he shows the beauty of cluttered interiors, cemeteries, peeling facades of buildings. “I saw that this person without architectural education understood and felt architecture much better than those who had such an education. And I was not mistaken in my decision, - Shamuzafarov himself said at the memorial evening. - David was in the very place where he was supposed to be. He became the engine of the museum, its heart. And well, the heart was taken out, but the museum continues to work … But it continues to develop in the direction that David directed it."
Friends and colleagues of David recalled with pleasure that just a few months after his arrival at the museum, Sargsyan turned this cultural institution into the epicenter of cultural and architectural life, a center of attraction for the world architectural community. For David himself, the museum became a home - it's no secret that the director spent days and nights here, and spent all his personal savings on the restoration of the museum building.“I don’t know if another such happy decade will be repeated in the history of the museum. With David, the museum was filled with the spirit of architectural happiness,”said Yevgeny Ass at the memorial evening. Among the merits of Sargsyan, the participants named the fact that in many respects it was through his efforts that public city protection movements appeared in Moscow - "Moscow, which does not exist", "Arhnadzor".
The leitmotif of the evening was the words that two years have passed since David Sargsyan passed away, but his memory is still alive. For example, Lyubov Shaks made a requiem film about David, Yuri Avvakumov presented the project “Director's Office” at the Venice Biennale, which was later exhibited in MuAre. But, the main thing that friends and colleagues do in memory of David is to continue his endeavors. As the coordinator of Arkhnadzor Marina Khrustaleva said in her speech: “I hope that someday we will be able to do everything that David asked for”. And the fact that two years after the director's death, so many of his friends and colleagues gather within the walls of the museum, only strengthens this hope.
