In 2010, the world's wealthiest art institution, the J. Paul Getty
Museum, found itself confronted by a century-old genocide. The Armenian
Church was suing for the return of eight pages from the Zeytun Gospels,
a manuscript illuminated by the greatest medieval Armenian artist, Toros
Roslin. Protected for centuries in a remote church, the holy manuscript
had followed the waves of displaced people exterminated during the
Armenian genocide. Passed from hand to hand, caught in the confusion and
brutality of the First World War, it was cleaved in two. Decades later,
the manuscript found its way to the Republic of Armenia, while its
missing eight pages came to the Getty.
The Missing Pages is the biography of a manuscript that is at once
art, sacred object, and cultural heritage. Its tale mirrors the story of
its scattered community as Armenians have struggled to redefine
themselves after genocide and in the absence of a homeland. Heghnar
Zeitlian Watenpaugh follows in the manuscript's footsteps through seven
centuries, from medieval Armenia to the killing fields of 1915 Anatolia,
the refugee camps of Aleppo, Ellis Island, and Soviet Armenia, and
ultimately to a Los Angeles courtroom.
Reconstructing the path of the pages, Watenpaugh uncovers the rich
tapestry of an extraordinary artwork and the people touched by it. At
once a story of genocide and survival, of unimaginable loss and
resilience, The Missing Pages captures the human costs of war and
persuasively makes the case for a human right to art.
