Memorializing genocide topic of holocaust scholar

This article features an event that occurred in the past.

Holocaust scholar Armen T. Marsoobian will present on Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, shown here, at 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 16, in Room 130 of the Fine and Performing Arts Center on the campus of Western Carolina University.

Noted Holocaust scholar Armen T. Marsoobian will speak about the relationship between art and the act of memorializing genocide at 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 16, in Room 130 of the Fine and Performing Arts Center on the campus of Western Carolina University.

“Memorials, Modernity and Art: How Do We Memorialize Genocide?” is free and open to the public.

Armen Marsoobian

A specialist in genocide research, Marsoobian has visited memorial sites in Eastern and Western Europe. He will speak in particular about Berlin’s controversial Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

American architect Peter Eisenman, of the deconstructivist school of architecture, designed Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, built on the site of a former SS barracks. The five-acre site is covered with thousands of concrete slabs of varying height arranged in a grid on a sloping field. The memorial contains no signage about what it commemorates.  

Marsoobian, chair of philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, will examine the aesthetic function of such works. The lecture will include photographs by Marsoobian of a recent trip to Berlin.

Complementing the presentation, from March 16 through Wednesday, May 5, WCU’s Fine Art Museum will show a series of 10 vitreographic prints by artist Erwin Eisch depicting scenes from a November 1938 Nazi attack on Germany’s Jewish population. Eisch, a glass sculptor from the village of Frauneau, in the German state of Bavaria, was 12 years old at the time of “Kristallnacht,” or “Night of the Crystal Death,” and created his “Kristallnacht” portfolio in 1992 in response to the event. Harvey K. and Bess Littleton of Spruce Pine donated the “Kristallnacht” portfolio to WCU as part of a larger gift.

Marsoobian’s visit is made possible by the Office of the Provost and in partnership with the Jerry Jackson Speakers Series, the Honors College, the Fine Art Museum, WCU’s department of philosophy and religion, the School of Art and Design, and the office of the dean of the College of Fine and Performing Arts.

Fine Art Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday. The museum is closed Sundays, Mondays, university holidays and academic breaks. For more information about the Marsoobian presentation or the museum, contact Martin DeWitt, museum director, at 828-227-2553 or mdewitt@wcu.edu. Visit the museum online at www.wcu.edu/fapac/galleries.