Today I am proud to witness the Boghossian Foundation come forward as a catalyst for a serious exploration of common ground among people. The Boghossian story is the typical Armenian journey -- from Armenia to Lebanon to Belgium and Switzerland. Armenia, an old nation with a new state, has been a champion and symbol of dialogue and cooperation through the centuries. As the Villa Empain becomes the center of shared creativity, the “embassy” of oriental cultures in the capital of Europe that you want to make it, you will have realized your dream, and all of us from Brussels to Yerevan will profit from your vision.

As a small people, serving as the perennial buffer between empires, on the most trampled path on earth, Armenians have become living witnesses of the benefit of dialogue between and within cultures. We have been engaged in that international exchange for ages. Today, we in Armenia are among its greatest promoters, especially in our neighborhood. Our Diaspora, living as it does across borders, is both the means and the beneficiary of international exchange.

As I started to think about Jean and Albert and what they are daring to do here, I realized that diplomats and artists have much in common. We are both the beneficiaries of dialogue, and perhaps because of that, we feel compelled to continually search for non-traditional ways to approach the overarching issue of our time: living at peace in a pluralist world. Diplomats and artists, like the societies which we represent, live in neighborhoods that are not going to change, with memories that are not going to go away, and with experiences that are irreversible. Instead, we look for ways to break the barriers of the past because we remain convinced that between cultures and countries, conversation must come first, in order for there to be any understanding at all.

To do our job, we rely on symbols and signals. We are both guided by rules, although we try to find creative, new ways of expressing and protecting universal truths.  But finding the new, doesn’t mean negation of the old, as you are showing us here. 

This renovated building will embrace its history. The Villa Empain has seen empires come and go. It has witnessed the making of modern Europe. With the exquisite renovation that is planned for it, the diversity and quality of its materials, its refined details and the coherence of the whole will be underscored. But it is the programs and the exhibitions that will, like the Villa itself, become a part of the patrimony of our shared cultures, of our diversity and quality, while celebrating the coherence of our whole.

Congratulations. I look forward to seeing the building completed and the program fully operational.