Ararat-Eskijian Museum Presents Lecture on “Portrait and Representations: Alfred of Wessex and Gagik of Vaspurakan: Progress and Prospects\”

MISSION HILLS — Dr. Anne Elizabeth Redgat will present an illustrated lecture on “Portrait and Representations: Alfred of Wessex and Gagik of Vaspurakan: Progress and Prospects, on Sunday, February 10, 2014, a 7:00 p.m. at the Ararat-Eskijian Museum, Sheen Chapel, 15105 Mission Hills Road, Mission Hills, CA. The event is sponsored by the Ararat-Eskijian Museum and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR).

In this lecture Dr. Redgate will present her work comparing the early-tenth-century King Gagik Artsruni of Vaspurakan with his near-contemporary, the late-ninth-century King Alfred of Wessex (in southern England), and their ideas about kingship. Both kings commissioned works of art and historical writings, and the comparison draws on these. She will also discuss her most recent work on the sculpture that decorates a window at the seventh-century Armenian church of Ptghni and the family of its founders, the Amatunis, and their ideas and claims concerning political authority. She will reflect on the similarities between King Alfred and King Gagik, the importance of the Amatunis to the Artsrunis and some links between Amatuni Ptghni and King Gagik’s early-tenth-century Church of the Holy Cross on Aghtamar, Lake Van. These are the foundations for her next book, whose working title is Christian Kingship in England and Armenia from the Late-Ninth to the Mid-Eleventh Century; Liturgy, Law and Self-Representation (Edwin Mellen Press).

Anne Elizabeth Redgate is Lecturer in History at Newcastle University (Newcastle upon Tyne) in the UK, where she has taught Anglo-Saxon history, Armenian history, and World History. She is the author of The Armenians (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998) and Religion, Politics and Society in Britain, 800-1066 (in press, Routledge), contributions to conferences and volumes in the UCLA Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces series, and other articles. She is especially interested in the centuries between 300 and 1100 AD, in questions of national identity, vernacular liturgy, heresy, the use of artistic imagery as a medium of political expression, and comparative history.

For more information contact the Ararat-Eskijian Museum at 818-838-4862 or ararat-eskijian-museum@netzero.net or NAASR at 617-489-1610 or hq@naasr.org.