The Russian Museum

Alongside the permanent exposition the Russian Museum has a great number of thematic and personal exhibitions. In this film Vladimir Gusyev, director of the Russian Museum, offers to make a sightseeing excursion round four opened temporary exhibitions. For the first time the one-man exhibition of the artist Sergei Lobanov acquaints viewers of Saint Petersburg with the Moscow artist's creative oeuvre, whose name is connected with the earliest history of The Knave of Diamonds Group.

The Herbarium Amoris exhibition in St Michael's Castle of the Russian Museum is dated to the tercentenary of Carl von Linne. The exhibition comprises the works by the Swedish photographer Edvard Koinberg. Carl von Linne's theory of plants' love-life serves as impulse to their creation.

The personal exhibition of Mikhail Vrubel is dedicated to the artist's 150th anniversary.

Large-scale exposition of the Seasons. Landscape in Russia. 19th - 20th Centuries exhibition covers the main periods of development of the Russian landscape painting and demonstrates the artworks of the Russian artists, who worked in various periods and different directions.

"For somebody he is a genius, but for somebody else he is something highly strange", - the artist Nikolai Murashko wrote about Mikhail Vrubel. And indeed contemporaries of the artist gave his oeuvre a disputed appreciations. Vladimir Stasov and Alexander Benois criticized him, but this strange genius had a great deal of admirers.

In this film the viewers together with Vladimir Gusyev, Director of the Russian Museum, may go round the rooms of the one-man exhibition of Mikhail Vrubel, which was opened in the Benois Wing to the artist's 150th anniversary. During the selection of exhibits the main accent was made on the articles that leave the fund storehouses seldom. The exhibition presents rare drawings, majolica and sculpture.

Love to the national nature found the expression on the canvases of many Russian painters. The landscape painting emerged as a genre in Russia at the end of the 18th century. Large-scale exposition of the Seasons exhibition covers the main periods of the development of the Russian landscape painting. Spring, summer, autumn and winter are presented in the oeuvre of the well-known Russian artists of the 18th-20th centuries such as Silvestr Schedrin, Mikhail Lebedev, Alexandr Ivanov, Arkhip Kuindzhi, Vasily Polenov, Ivan Shishkin and the others.

Many of people remember well-known hero from Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol hearing on this surname. But this film is dedicated not to him but to Fyodor Plushkin, collector of the 19th century. Why had he began to collect antique articles? What had he collected? How had he kept items? Vladimir Gusyev, director of the Russian Museum, offers viewers to know more about the collector's personality, his tough way of life. He offers to visit the chief town of uyezd Valday with preserved Pluskin's house, where his unique collection was kept, and to see art works from this collection, which was acquired by the Russian Museum and is held in the museum now.

The Drawing and Watercolour in Russian Culture. The 2nd Half of the 19th Century exhibition is the third exhibition in the Three Centuries of Russian Drawing museum's project. 120 artworks by 65 artists were selected for the exhibition. Drawings and watercolours by little known artists are introduced extensively at the exhibition. Their artworks are presented for the first time. Vladimir Gusyev, director of the Russian Museum, offers to go round the exhibition's rooms and to trace the development of the Russian drawing technique by example of the presented artworks and to feel the evolution of the aesthetic rushes.

In this film Vladimir Gusyev invites viewers to remember the history of the Russian Museum foundation, to reflect on the reasons and public prerequisites, which formed in the 2nd half of the 19th century and assisted to the realization of Emperor Alexander III idea to found the museum of national art in Saint Petersburg. The director of the Russian Museum narrates about the museum's life at present and past, about the special world created by the Russian artists and sculptors, which the staff of the museum preserves carefully.

This film is dedicated to one of the most prominent Russian landscape painters of the 19th century. In the artist's creative oeuvre landscape is not a soulless staffage, but it is the main hero of artworks, it finds portrait, recognizable features. The artist graduated the Academy of Arts with a gold medal and got a right for abroad studying. He spent most of his life in Italy, died and was buried on a cemetery in a small seaside town. Vladimir Gusyev, director of the Russian Museum, invites viewers to visit Sorrento in Italy, where the artist spent the last years of his life and where the memory of him remained to our days. The exhibition of artworks by Silvestr Schedrin and the other Russian artists, who lived and worked in Italy, was opened on the Villa Fiorentina.

The Academy of Arts. 1757 - 2007. To the 250th Anniversary of the Academy of Arts. The Exhibition in the Russian Museum The 18th century was commemorated in Russia by an extensive penetration and inclusion of the European art into the Russian culture. The Imperial Court was in need of high-class painters and sculptors. Gradually invited foreign masters stopped to satisfy requirements of the court and the aristocracy. And gradually Russia became to feel need of its own higher educational establishment to cherish the Russian artists, sculptors and medalists. Vladimir Gusyev, director of the Russian Museum, narrates about the foundation of the Academy of Arts, the principles of training that were laid in its foundation, the training conditions and the awarding of the apprentices for successes. The exhibition includes portraits of the best artists and teachers of the so-called Council Room of the Academy of Arts, historical paintings as well as studies painted from life in the drawing class-room by apprentices of the Academy of Arts.