The house-museum of William Saroyan, a prominent American writer of Armenian descent, opened in the Californian city of Fresno on August 31, 2018, on the day of the 110th anniversary of the birth of this author of short stories, plays, screenplays, autobiographical books.
Fresno is the hometown of Saroyan, here he was born and ended his days here. The opening of the museum has become an unprecedented event for Armenian culture. This is by no means an exaggeration, since there are rare cases when Armenia as a country is involved in the implementation of a cultural project with international ambitions. The museum was opened at number 2729 West Griffith Way, where the writer spent the last seventeen years of his life and where he created ten of his works.
Saroyan's house is included in the register of monuments of the city of Fresno as an object of cultural heritage, but from an architectural point of view it is nothing outstanding: it is a one-story frame building covered with beige plaster from the mid-1960s with a total area of 110 m2. In 2015, the house was put up for auction and was acquired by the Yerevan Intellectual Renaissance Foundation, founded by Russian media mogul Artur Janibekyan. His intention was to turn the house into a literary museum, but at that time the building was in poor condition.
After the death of William Saroyan, several owners changed there, and no traces of the writer remained in the house. Therefore, the main goal of the foundation was to recreate the “Saroyan” content there. To implement this idea, a competition was held, to which five Yerevan architectural bureaus were invited to participate. There was no rigid framework in the task of the competition: in the concept of the future museum, the focus was only on the communication of visitors not with Saroyan's things, but with the writer himself. This position immediately implied the high-tech content of the future museum.
The winner of the competition was the "Storaket" workshop, which developed the project of the museum together with the photographer Karen Mirzoyan, the founder of the Mirzoyan Library in Yerevan. This project, designated by the authors as digital reproduction, is aimed at creating a holistic image of William Saroyan, not focusing solely on his work, but illuminating different aspects of his personality, paying special attention to his life hobbies. The first visit to the house made a strong impression on the authors: they felt the emptiness of the abandonment of the house and the absence of any traces of the writer there.
Recreating the feeling of their hero's presence in this space, the authors began with a detailed study of his personality. In the process of research, they discovered unknown facts of his biography, and so William Saroyan became in many ways a discovery for them. The authors brought their perception and experience of the house and personality of the writer into the concept of the future museum, proposing to create there a space where the visitor would step by step reveal Saroyan for himself in all his guises.
Since the house has the status of a monument, its exterior was left unchanged, but the interior space was completely transformed. The entrance area contains a 3D logo that changes every day. Further, to the right of the entrance, there is a reception desk and a lobby with a souvenir shop selling stones, which are located on a stand in the shape of a checkerboard. This is a reference to the fact that Saroyan was a collector of stones: traveling around the world, the writer took stones from different countries and regions with him as a souvenir. Copies of these stones were 3D printed.
The main hall is shaded. The exposition there is formed by four walls-installations, which show different aspects of the life and work of the writer. At the entrance, an interactive photo-wall is set up, which reacts to the movement of the visitor: after him, an illuminated spot moves along its surface, allowing you to see the photographs displayed on it, which cover the entire life of the writer.
A video wall adjoins the photo wall, where documentaries and feature films dedicated to William Saroyan are shown.
Opposite the photo-wall is a glass wall, which contains graphics, including watercolors, by Saroyan himself. According to his recollections, he drew something almost every day. Many of the drawings have been recreated since they have not survived to this day. The fourth wall is occupied by the covers of books by William Saroyan in different languages.
After the main hall, the inspection route leads to a room / niche, where Saroyan's monologue can be seen and heard with the help of a hologram. In the future, the authors even intend to create an artificial intelligence of the writer so that museum visitors can communicate with him.
There is also a small scientific center in the museum, where Saroyan's digital archive is available to everyone.
The writer bequeathed his house to students and scientists as a research center, including for the organization of a museum. The target audience of the cultural institution created by the "Storaket" bureau and Karen Mirzoyan is schoolchildren. The brightness and clarity of the forms they have chosen are well suited to this task. The resulting museum is a fascinating recreation of something that was never here before. This is a museum of the writer in his own house, not a classic house-museum. And the lack of personal belongings of William Saroyan rather contributed to the implementation of this idea than became an obstacle for it, since the foundation initially intended to create a museum of a collection of personal belongings of the writer that was not at all trivial: the emphasis was placed on digital recreation of Saroyan's entire professional and personal history.
