Ex. 1 Read the text. Anyone who ever went to see David Sarkisyan, the late director of the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture

Anyone who ever went to see David Sarkisyan, the late director of the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, would likely find him in his office on the ground floor. Behind a mass of fascinating objects piled up on desks and drawers, the walls covered in posters and photos, he would be sitting with a cigarette and a welcome.

When he died in 2010, his office remained untouched, partly in grief, partly in remembrance – until just recently, when it was painstakingly taken apart and moved to a new space in the museum that’s open to the public.

“David’s Office,” as the room is called, was unveiled last week in “The Ruins,” the exhibit area in the courtyard of the museum.

Sarkisyan had a remarkable life. He was a scientist who invented a cure to relieve the suffering of those with Alzheimer’s, a movie maker who worked and became friends with the likes of French legend Jeanne Moreau, who visited him at the museum, and finally, the revolutionary head of the Shchusev. Over the course of 10 years, he transformed the museum into one of the city’s best cultural spaces and created a home for the city’s architectural conservation movement, of which he was a passionate leader.

When he died, the Moscow city government, then led by Mayor YuryLuzhkov, with whom he had fought many battles, blocked his burial in the Armenian cemetery, a move that had friends wryly noting that he could annoy Luzhkov even in death.

The museum was forced to move the office after a visit from a different kind of city official – fire safety officers, who said that it was a fire hazard.

Graduate students moved the pieces one by one. Almost all of them are in exactly the same position as they were in his original office, and are now visible through a glass wall, said architect YuryGrigoryan, who organized the move.

When visitors stare through the glass, a thousand and more objects look back: a model of Ostankino Tower, an Armenian cognac bottle with Sarkisyan’s photo on it, a statue of a boy in a turban, a plastic melon, a Yury Gagarin badge, a statue with the nose missing and much more.

The room will remain open year round; when heated, it’s a nice place to go after seeing an exhibit in the “The Ruins.”

Date: 2016-02-19; view: 274; Нарушение авторских прав