Armenian Genocide commemorative billboards installed in Boston

Armenian Genocide commemorative billboards installed in Boston

PanARMENIAN.Net - "Now is the time to turn hope into action" is the message on the 2011 Armenian Genocide commemorative billboards sponsored by Peace of Art, Inc.

One digital billboard 10' x 30' is on display now in Foxboro, MA, 1/4 mile south of the main entrance to Gillette Stadium and Patriot Place. It is highly visible and strategically located at a long 4-way traffic signal on Route 1, between I-95 and I-495.

The second and third billboards, 11'x 27' each, are expected to go up on April 4, 2011 in the heart of the Armenian community in Watertown, MA, on Mount Auburn Street near the Armenian market, close to the Armenian cultural centers and churches, and on Arsenal Street, just minutes from the Mass Pike (I-90), to Boston, and close to major retail centers including the Arsenal Mall and the Watertown Mall.

The message on the billboards reminds President Obama of his campaign promise to recognize the Armenian Genocide. In the middle of the word "recognize" is a logo which symbolizes ACTION designed specifically for this year's billboards.

"This project is very close to my heart because my parents were survivors of the Armenian genocide," said Daniel Varoujan Hejinian the founder and president of Peace of Art, Inc.

"As a child, my parents' history had great impact on me, and growing up I saw history through their eyes."

Daniel Varoujan Hejinian, is the son of Armenian Genocide survivors who fled to Syria during the events that began in April 1915. At the age of nineteen, his artwork was exhibited at the National Museum in Aleppo, Syria. He left Aleppo in 1969 for Soviet Armenia to study art in the Fine Arts and Drama Institute in Yerevan, Armenia. In 1979, he left Soviet Armenia for the United States.

He painted many corporate murals in Boston Massachusetts, and religious murals for seven Armenian Churches in the United States. His art work has been exhibited in many prestigious art galleries throughout the United States and it is represented in private and corporate collections around the world.

Daniel Varoujan Hejinian has dedicated his life to promoting peace through his artwork. In 2003, he founded Peace of Art, www.peaceofart.org a non-profit educational organization to raise awareness to the universal human condition. Through his works of art he showed the absence of peace, and the importance of the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

In 1996, he began the annual Armenian Genocide commemoration and international recognition campaign by displaying large billboards on major intersections in Massachusetts USA, to honor the memory of the victims, and calling for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The objective was to bring the reality of the Armenian Genocide from the closed doors of the Armenian community to the outside, to the community-at-large. In the last seven years the billboards have been sponsored by Peace of Art, Inc.

In 2009 the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." The Committee further stated that he captured the world's attention and gave its people hope for a better future. However, President Obama stated that he viewed the decision "less as a recognition of his own accomplishments and more as a "call for action."

The 2011 Armenian Genocide commemorative billboards are a "call for action" to President Barack Obama as he fulfills his election campaign promise, turning hope into action by declaring his recognition of the Armenian Genocide and calling it by its real name, according to The Armenian Reporter.

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