A group of environmentalist held a press conference today to protest the planned construction of a Komitas Museum in the pantheon/park of the same name.

They say that the memorial park in Yerevan, where the graves of numerous Armenian notables including Komitas Vardapet are located, will suffer as a consequence.

One public commentator, Karineh Hakobyan, said that the best way to raise public awareness about Komitas was to improve conditions in the panteon and not by building a museum there.

Arbak Vardanyan, a municipal architect, claimed that the new two-storey museum would be built on land belonging to the adjacent cultural center. Only 1,200 meters of green space would be used, the architect said.

Environmental activist Silva Adamyan said there was no need to build a new structure and proposed that a section of the Komitas Conservatory be appropriated for the museum instead.

The activists stated that they weren’t opposed to the construction per say, but not at the expense of green space.

They also voiced the concern that the new structure could be used for other purposes in the future and provided examples where cultural buildings were later transformed into entertainment and other commercial venues.