Films on the Nicholas Roerich Museum
Frontline at Znamenka: Watch in the name of Culture
On 28 April 2017 Maliy Znamensky lane was marked by a Frontline, an invisible line which divided the 26 year history of the International Center of the Roerichs (ICR) into the period “before” and “after”.
In the past the International Center of the Roerichs and its non-governmental Museum named after Nicholas Roerich were recognized internationally, they organized travelling exhibitions, international scientific conferences, issued books and magazines... And now the Museum is destroyed by the Ministry of Culture and the Roerichs heritage seized.
It means that there should be a non-governmental control over the actions of the intruders here at Frontline. The documentary covers the history of the establishment of the non-governmental Museum named after Nicholas Roerich, its heyday and barbarous destruction. Please, help to spread the documentary, so that more people would know the truth about an unprecedented tragedy of our culture.
Roerich Museum: An insight into the artist’s remarkable life // Russia Today. 19.04.2012
Painter, scientist, traveler, public figure, writer and philosopher, Nikolai Roerich, was a man of many talents. No wonder his Moscow museum is as unusual and multi-faceted as the man himself was.
Although his museum is housed in a 17th-century mansion in the city center, Roerich himself had few links to Moscow. He was born in St. Petersburg in 1874. At an early age, he became interested in painting, history and archaeology – the interests that would become lifelong passions.
Roerich’s father did not want him to pursue painting as a career, preferring law as a vocation for his son. So the young man studied both, without forgetting his love for archaeology.
While still a student, he had already become a member of the Russian archeological society and conducted numerous excavations around St. Petersburg and surrounding areas. His early paintings were very much inspired by Russian history and landscapes, as well as by ancient legends and fairytales.
After the Revolution, Roerich and his wife lived abroad, in Scandinavia, the UK and the US, designing stage scenery for several Russian opera performances and going on exhibition tours. In the 1920s he realized his lifelong dream of going on a scientific expedition to India and the Himalayas. Many of his paintings were inspired by this trip, which also proved to be a long spiritual journey.
Fascinated by the philosophers of the East, Roerich devised an entire philosophical and ethical teaching, called Living Ethics, with a following around the world. He continued to live and work in India, where he died in 1947.
Nicholas Roerich is remembered as an advocate of the arts and culture and as a man who initiated an international pact for the protection of artistic and academic institutions and historical sites. He left behind some seven thousand paintings and dozens of books and essays. And Moscow’s Roerich museum offers a captivating look at his life and legacy.
The Nicholas Roerich Museum (Moscow, 2013)
The Nicholas Roerich Museum is situated in the very heart of Moscow, on the territory of the Lopoukhins' ancient city estate. It hardly resembles other art museums and galleries. Its history and fate are as unique and unusual as the life of the man whose name it bears.
To Svetoslav Nikolayevich Roerich belongs the initiative to build the first cultural institution of a new type in the country, the Nicholas Roerich Public Museum, in honor of a great painter, thinker, versatile scientist, talented pedagogue, and famous public figure. The Museum was established as a public cultural center according to Svetoslav Roerich's understanding of Сulture. Since, in his opinion, a cultural organization must not be a state organization, but a public one. As S. Roerich had predicted, a considerable independence in the use of new approaches together with the potential for wide-ranged cultural initiatives and a versatile collaboration with the International community beyond any departmental barriers, allowed to create in Russia a unique synthetic cultural center. A Museion of the 21st century was established: an emanation of the new times and new cultural and historical tasks.
The Museum contents comprises the Roerichs' priceless cultural heritage passed on to the Soviet Roerichs' Foundation (now International Center of the Roerichs) by Svetoslav Roerich in 1990. Exceptionally rich in terms of artistic, philosophic and scientific content, it carries in itself a new cosmic world view for which new interest grows more each year.
The core of the Roerichs' heritage is the philosophy of cosmic reality -- the Living Ethics, which develops the idea of a close relationship between man and Cosmos, contains knowledge which assists in understanding the specific features peculiar to the new evolutionary stage of mankind's development.
The Museum exhibition, created by the Nicholas Roerich Museum General Director Ludmila Shaposhnikova reflects the key stages in life and the creative path of our great compatriots and acquaints the visitors with their truly dedicated activities. Unique exhibits saturated with spiritual energy fill the ancient vaulted halls with a special aura.