Three exhibitions in the Museum by name of Nicholas Roerich
On October 8th at 16:00 the grand opening of three exhibitions - “75 Years of the Roerich Pact”, “The Perishing Collection” and “The Lopukhins’ Estate. The Past. The Present. The Future” – is taking place in the halls of the Museum by name of Nicholas Roerich. They are timed to the International social and scientific conference “75 Years of the Roerich Pact”, which commences on October 9th 2010.
The exhibition “75 Years of the Roerich Pact” is dedicated to the history of creation of the “Treaty for the Protection of Artistic and Scientific Institutions and Historic Monuments”, which was signed on April 15th in Washington by the representatives of 21 countries of North and South America, including the US, and was titled “The Roerich Pact”.
This historic document became the basis for the international legal system in the sphere of cultural heritage protection. Its initiator was our outstanding compatriot, a great artist, philosopher, scholar and traveller, Nicholas Roerich.
The exhibition presents unique archive documents, photographs capturing the history of the Roerich Pact’s creation and adoption, reproductions of paintings by Nicholas Roerich and Svetoslav Roerich and photographs of monuments, damaged during wars and regional conflicts.
The exhibition “The Lopukhins’ Estate. The Past. The Present. The Future” tells us about the unique architectural monument of XVII-XIX centuries – the Lopukhins’ Estate – one of the most interesting specimen of the architectural tradition of Moscow town mansions.
More than three hundred years of the estate’s history are associated with such outstanding Russian figures as Peter the Great and Catherine the Second, the Lopukhins' family, the Protasovs counts, the Bahmetievs princes, a famous architect M.F. Kazakov and other people, who played an important role in Russia's history. In 1989 Svetoslav Rierich, a world-famous artist and social activist, visited the Lopukhins’ Estate and chose it as a place for establishing the International Centre-Museum by name of Nicholas Roerich. Ever since the fates of these two unique monuments of art and history – the Lopukhins’ Estate and the Roerichs creative heritage – intertwined and mutually enriched each other.
The exhibition “The Perishing Collection” consists of two subsections and is dedicated to a dismal fate of a part of the Roerichs’ heritage and some of works of art, created by them.
The first part of “The Perishing Collection” exhibition tells about the plunder of a part of the Roerichs’ heritage, which belonged to Nicholas Roerich’s older son, George Roerich, and was brought by him to the USSR in 1957. Most valuable paintings, archival documents and manuscripts, family relics and collections stored in George Roerich’s Moscow flat were stolen and illegally sold after his death. Many of these masterpieces were subsequently lost. The exhibition also includes reproductions of the paintings by Nicholas Roerich, stored in George Roerich’s apartment on the Leninsky Avenue in Moscow until the 2000s.
The second part of the exhibition consists of thematic stands that show the paintings by Svetoslav Roerich soon-to-be-sold from the stock of the New York Roerich Museum. The collection of paintings, that previously belonged to the Roerichs‘ family friend and collaborator, Cathrine Campbell, is set on sale by auction on initiative of the current New York Roerich Museum’s director Daniel Entin. This rare set of paintings by Svetoslav Roerich, demonstrating various stages of his creative development, is threatened to be trapped in closed private collections.
The exhibitions will be open to public visit from October 13th to November 8th 2010.
Museum by name of Nicholas Roerich is open every day except Mondays from 11:00 to 19:00.
Address: 3/5 Maly Znamensky, Moscow,
Tel/fax:8-499-271-34-23
