MEDIA EVENT "NEW UZBEKISTAN: UNIQUE CULTURAL INITIATIVES" WAS HELD IN WASHINGTON
On September 27, 2019, in the capital of the United States, Washington, in the prestigious hall of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, a media event "New Uzbekistan: unique cultural initiatives" was held.
Most of the participants of the event - famous American historians, orientalists, collectors and others put on bathrobes from luxurious Bukhara and Margelan textiles, thereby giving a special oriental spirit to the media event. It was Uzbek textiles that received special attention at the media event. Scientists openly confessed their love for the Uzbek ikat, spoke about its indescribable beauty in reports and presentations, and demonstrated their outfits.
“If I could enjoy one kind of art in my life, then the answer is obvious - it is Uzbek textiles,” world-famous collector, founding director of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, Dr. Guido Goldman, quoted from the Washington Post newspaper.
“For the first time, the collections of the cultural heritage of Uzbekistan were so widely presented in the United States, and for the first time we gathered famous scientists and researchers from American museums, libraries, art historians, collectors and just fans of the culture and art of Uzbekistan to talk about what treasures of Uzbekistan are stored today in foundations in America and Canada, whether they are in private collections or public museums,” said Adam Smith Albion, executive director of the Southeast Asia Leadership Academy. “The project has something to be proud of, producing 35 beautiful volumes in more than two dozen fantastic documentaries.
Representatives of the museum community and collectors expressed their undoubted intentions to cooperate with the project "Cultural Heritage of Uzbekistan in the Collections of the World", emphasizing its uniqueness for world practice.
“After successful events in England, Germany, France, Poland, the Czech Republic, a wave of presentations of the cultural initiatives of New Uzbekistan has reached America,” said Frederick Starr, founder and chairman of the Central Asia and Caucasus Institute, in his opening speech. “This is a very ambitious project. No other country has ever collected its cultural heritage, which is in various collections of the world, into a single catalog. Scientists in the United States also welcome and support the efforts of Uzbekistan in this direction.”
“Today we got acquainted with only a small part of this work. We understand that today he enjoys the full support of the Uzbek government, as the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev fully supports this initiative, which made an indelible impression on all of us today. I think that the media event in this sense has achieved its goal today,” said Deniz Beyazit, Deputy Director of the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
At the end of the media event, the chairman of the World Society for the Preservation, Study and Promotion of the Cultural Heritage of Uzbekistan Firdavs Abdukhalikov and collector Gido Goldman agreed to publish the album "Uzbek Ikats", which includes the richest collection of unique samples of Uzbek textiles, which Dr. Goldman donated to a number of American museums . The world-famous collector also announced his full support for the project and his disinterested participation in the release of a catalog about Uzbek ikats.
“This media event differs from similar events held by us in other countries in that for the first time in the history of our project, large private collectors openly spoke about their cooperation. This is a great success and a demonstration of the level of trust in the new Uzbekistan, since we know that it is in private The collections contain a huge layer of masterpieces of the cultural heritage of our people that are still unknown to the general public,” said Firdavs Abdukhalikov.