FRESNO, CA — The Armenian Museum of Fresno is proud to announce the opening of a powerful dual exhibition, Fresno Armenians: 50 Years Ago along with From the Fields of Fresno, on Tuesday, June 25, 2025, with a public reception from 3 to 7 p.m.
The exhibition run through August 27.
The museum is located in the University of California Center at 550 E. Shaw Avenue in Fresno, across from Fashion Fair mall.
The museum is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m and admission is free.
Listen to the report by KMJ’s Liz Kern.
Fresno Armenians: 50 Years Ago features over 300 captivating photographs by Robby Antoyan, taken at Armenian community picnics in Fresno during the 1970s. These rare and intimate images document the vibrant social life, traditions, and enduring spirit of Fresno’s Armenian-American community.
Running alongside the photo exhibition is From the Fields of Fresno, a sound installation by composer Joseph Bohigian. The work is a tribute to those generations who established a new home in Fresno and blends oral histories of descendants of Armenian Genocide survivors with Armenian folk music and ambient sounds exploring themes of memory, displacement, and connection to place. It takes as its sources the sounds of Armenian Fresno: recordings made as part of the Works Progress Administration’s California Folk Music Project in 1939 by the American ethnomusicologist Sidney Robertson Cowell, and a 1984 recording of the artist’s great-grandmother recounting her journey to America. These recordings illustrate the sounds and stories of the community in its earliest decades, a combination of the music they brought with them from the homeland and the influence of their new, American home.
Together, these two exhibitions offer a rich, immersive reflection on heritage, identity, and the stories that shape a community.
“This pairing of photography and sound invites visitors to experience Fresno’s Armenian past in deeply emotional and sensory ways,” said Varoujan der Simonian, director of the Armenian Museum of Fresno.
The exhibition and opening reception are free and open to the public. For more information, please visit www.armof.org.
Joseph Bohigian, Ph.D. is a Fresno native. His music often explores themes of memory, culture, and the experiences of the Armenian-American community. Influenced by his own heritage and upbringing, Bohigian’s work incorporates archival materials such as sound recordings, interviews, and ancient musical notations to breathe new life into forgotten histories. His compositions have been performed globally, including in Armenia, Australia, Ireland, Montreal, the Disney Concert Hall, and the Temescal Arts Center in Oakland.
Robby Antoyan is a Fresno native whose upbringing was deeply influenced by the rich cultural fabric of the local Armenian community. Like many of his Armenian peers, Robby grew up surrounded by who had relocated to Fresno following the Armenian Genocide of 1915, as well as later waves of immigration from Russia in the 1940s and ’50s, and from the Middle East in the ‘70s. These older generations of Armenians carried themselves with a quiet authenticity — never trying to be anything other than who they were — and that left a lasting impression on him.
After his first year away at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo where he received his degree in Architecture, Robby returned home and began photographing this generation. An amateur with a newly purchased Minolta SRT101 and manual focus lens, he set out to document Armenians aged 60 and up, capturing them at church picnics, family gatherings, and everyday moments. His photos offer a candid, heartfelt portrait of a resilient community and a generation shaped by memory, migration, and cultural pride.
About the Armenian Museum of Fresno Founded in 2001, the Armenian Museum of Fresno is dedicated to preserving and promoting Armenian culture, heritage, and history through exhibits, events, research, and educational programs. The museum serves as a cultural hub for the community, offering visitors a deeper understanding of the rich Armenian legacy and its global impact.
This exhibition has been made possible, in part, by funding from the City of Fresno Measure P, Expanded Access to Arts and Culture, administered by the Fresno Arts Council.
