The Minnesota Museum of Russian Art

This week I got to go to a museum that I have been meaning to go to for years. I first drove past the Russian art museum back in 06. I remember thinking to myself, "what an odd place for a Russian museum". At first glance I just thought it was a church.....which it used to be. It is complete with a steeple and and very tall windows. That led me to think how sad it was that a church lost it's congregation, but that at least it can be used for something as lovely as art. But of course, like most busy people, I just never made the time to go in there. When I decided to take this class I was hoping that the Russian museum would be included in places to visit. Lucky for me it was.

When entering the museum you you first walk past a little information desk. I was lucky enough to be greeted by a museum staff member who was very knowledgeable. She told me all about the artists, their history, and some of the history of art in Russia. She sounded very excited while telling me about the museum which made my experience better.

After you go through the entrance to the museum you are able to go straight into the Russkiy Salon, down to a lower darker gallery where the Photographer to the Tsar exhibition is held, or up some stairs to an area that holds more art as part of the Russkiy Salon. I decided to go down into the Photographer to the Tsar exhibition first. This was a dark room where the only light was coming from behind some photographs that were illuminated. In this room there were 26 large photos, about three feet by three feet, that were taken by a man named Sergei M. Prokudin-Gorskii. He lived from 1863-1944, in the Russian empire. He was a man of science, being an inventor, chemist, and an artist. Prokudin-Gorski was also an artist. As an inventor and an artist he developed the first known process for taking color photographs. He did this by using a camera that he designed. What happened is that he would expose scenes onto a piece of glass using three different colored filters. Later on he would project the images onto a wall or a screen of some sort with a lantern projector.

With this "camera" Prokudin-Gorski made a voyage over all of Russia. He did this from 1906-1907 and again in 1911 with the support of the Russian Tsar at the time, Nicholas II. On these voyages Prokudin-Gorski took pictures of the many different cultures that made up Russia at the time. Mostly he stuck to the Silk Road and the Trans-Caspian Railroad as his route, and saw cities such as Merv, Bukhara, and Samakand.

The photographs that he took showed the land, the people, and many types of homes and buildings that people lived in. He took pictures of farms and all the animals of the areas. Also he was able to capture many cultural events of the areas; men on horses, women doing work at home and care of children, and places of worship. The photos are beautiful and seem almost to be more clear and crisp than a lot of the pictures that you see today taken by digital cameras. Prokudin-Gorski was ahead of his time, and did a great job representing the landscape and cultures of Russia in the early 20th century.

Next I went upstairs to the Russkiy Salon. There were many many paintings in this Salon, most of which were from before WWI. Based on what the woman at the information desk told me, many of these paintings were never seen in Russia. They were painted during a time when many art forms were being restricted, and therefor had to be kept a secret. There were three paintings in particular that I liked the most.

First was called Sunday in the Village. This was painted in 1884 by Nikolai DmitrievichDmitriev-Orenburgsky. The painting is oil on canvas and is a scene of a village celebration. You can see many people all together. Some are dancing, some are sitting on a hill watching, and still others are playing instruments for everyone. The detail in this painting was amazing. The colors were so accurate to a warm summer day that you felt like you could be right in there with them. In the background you see a church, many houses of the village, a large bay area and ships floating in the water.

Second is Gathering of Village Women which was painted in 1910 by Stepan Fedorovich Kolesnikov. The first thing that hits your eyes with this is the color RED. The whole thing is just red, red and more red. The picture is an oil on canvas of four women standing with each other outside of a church on a cold spring day. There is a church in the back ground and melting snow all around. The ground is muddy and the sky looks very gray. The women are dressed all in red, the buildings are painted red. The only thing in this painting that isn't red is the church. It is white with blue domes on it's rooftop. In speaking with the woman at the information desk again I found out that red was a very important color to the Russian people. It had many religious ties to it, and was in general a very old cultural representation of the Russian people.

My third favorite painting from 1986 was Unmade Bed by Mai Volfovich Dantsig. This was a very large painting that was on the third floor of the museum. This painter was interesting as he used bold colors and bold application in his paintings. He used this to pull a viewer "into the room". A plaque next to the painting stated that he liked to "romanticize the harsh reality of life" in his work. So what you are looking at in this painting is someones bedroom that has an open door out onto a balcony. You feel like this could be your own room. The bed is unmade, there are cloths laying around, and a cigarette burning in the ash tray. I like that this room feels so comfortable. I would like this painting in my own home.

My experience at the Minnesota Museum of Russian Art was a good one. I like how it used to be a church. I think that this really makes for an interesting presentation of the art. The long narrow area that used to be where the congregation of the church sat is the perfect place for art to be hung. You are able to walk through and see everything, but there is enough space that it is not crowded. What is neat is how they built the top floor around the perimeter of the church. The middle is hollowed out so that you can see down to the space below. In this way you feel that you are totally surrounded by art.

I liked this museum, as I have like all of the places I have visited so far. The normal price a person pays to go in is only $5. This is a very low cost for the experience that you have inside. I would recommend you go.