Talk:Hagop Sandaldjian

A fact from Hagop Sandaldjian appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 November 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that microminiature sculptor Hagop Sandaldjian carved Mount Ararat on a grain of rice, and made a crucifix out of a bisected strand of his own hair?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/November.

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Real or hoax?

The Museum of Jurassic Technology is well-known for the unreliability of its source material, and is frequently associated with elaborate, large-scale hoaxes (cf. article on "Superfiction" to which the museum's wikipedia page is linked). Wikipedia would be especially vulnerable to this sort of misinformation, and its purposes and value nonetheless being appreciated, in theory wikipedia exists to promote real, scientifically verified information.

I'd be curious as to if any of the articles referenced on this page are independently verifiable. The "Cabinet of Wonders" book for example certainly recognizes the problem at hand.

Essentially what I'm asking is, did this person really exist, or did the museum (or someone else inspiring the museum) invent him as a kind of creative hoax? If it can't be proved that he exists from multiple independent sources, this must be acknowledged in the article.(62.38.54.89 (talk) 13:46, 19 November 2009 (UTC))[reply]

If you (or others) find reliable sources that continue to question Sandaldjian's authenticity, I agree that they should be appropriately included in the article. I did not find any such sources. While some of the exhibits at the MJT are questionable, all of the sources that I could find report Sandaldjian's story and art as legitimate. It may also be worth noting here that there are other microminiaturists who work in similar fashion (see Category:Microminiature sculptors for Wikipedia articles on a few of them).--Arxiloxos (talk) 15:36, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Sources

In David Wilson's essay (titled "Museum of Jurassic Technology") in 2004's Obsession, Compulsion, Collection: On Objects, Display Culture, and Interpretation he gives the name "Sandaldjian Sandaldjian" for this artist. In that same article Wilson writes that "In his home country, [Sandaldjian] had been a very successful violinist, studying at the Moscow Conservatory and playing lead violin with the Yerevan State Orchestra and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. He had developed a system of violen instruction called the 'ergonomic method of violin instruction,' [excised for brevity] The ergonomic method of violin instruction became the state-supported and endorsed method of violin instruction throughout the Soviet Union."

Eye of the needle: Hagop Sandaldjian (exhibition) (Jennifer Cottrill in Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine Issue 96, October-December 1999) also discusses the MJT microsculptures exhibit with a more ambivalent disposition towards the details of Sandaljian's life put forward by the museum. Ascelyn (talk) 03:12, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]