The Time of Empire Style exhibition has opened in the Palace Pavilion of 1825 in the Kolomenskoe Memorial Estate in Moscow.

It will represent over 100 rare exhibits dating back to the luxurious epoch of the 19th century.
      
Some items will be displayed for general public for the first time, such us, for example, a rare collection of bronze clocks of that period. All these period pieces, among them furniture, palace interior furnishings, sculptural compositions, portraits and graphic works are united by the Empire style, which was especially popular in France under Napoleon and in Russia during the reign of Alexander I.

The exhibition is dedicated to the 200th anniversary since the Patriotic War of 1812, which put an end to Napoleon's policy of grab. The choice of the exhibition venue is not accidental: the Palace Pavilion of 1825 is the only remaining construction of the Palace of Alexander I. In childhood the future emperor often visited Kolomenskoe with his grandmother Catherine II.

The exhibition is open for public from June 29th to September 29th, 2012.

© Ria.ru. 29 June, 2012

The Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Preserve has reported on the restoration of the Agate Rooms which began in January 2011. The progress of the restoration is monitored quarterly. This year’s second quarter checkup was carried out by representatives of the TransSoyuz Charitable Foundation (sponsor), the St Petersburg Committee on Monuments Preservation and the State Hermitage Museum.

The monitors approved of the ongoing renovation in the Large Hall and the Jasper and Oval Cabinets, and of the work of the Tsarskoye Selo Amber Workshop restoring the pavilion’s doors, lamps, and unique 18th-century parquets of rosewood, ebony, boxwood, hornbeam, teak, amaranth, etc.

In April–June 2012, the Large Hall of the Agate Rooms had its marvelous stuccowork cleaned and fixed firmly, 60 painted fragments re-installed on the ceiling, the cultured marble facing carefully restored on the walls and in the niches (with the original finish and the post-war restoration inserts carefully preserved), 

Works in the Large Hall are scheduled for completion in the late September 2012. In the Jasper Cabinet, the stone inlays on the walls are yet to be restored, while the wooden domed ceiling’s reinforcement has been accomplished.

© Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Preserve. 28 June, 2012

Vladimir Tolstoy, the great-great-grandson of Leo Tolstoy, has been appointed a cultural adviser to the Russian President Vladimir Putin. The appointment was made in May, shortly after Putin returned to the Kremlin as president after serving as the prime minister for four years.

Since 1994, Vladimir Tolstoy has been the director of Yasnaya Polyana, the writer's estate and museum. Situated near the city of Tula, south of Moscow, the writer's house and grounds were turned into a museum in 1921. Leo Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra, was the first director of the museum, where the writer is buried. The house and grounds are famous for preserving the atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Russian country life.

In his new role as a cultural adviser to the president, Vladimir Tolstoy told The Art Newspaper that he will be addressing a range of cultural issues, from literature to music, theatre, cinema and museums, especially those in protected zones such as Tolstoy's museum.

While he was the director of the museum, he made it more accessible to tourists, scholars and Tolstoy family members, whom he gathers there regularly for reunions. Tolstoy's wife, Yekaterina Tolstaya, who has worked at the museum for years, has been named its new director. She told the Russian media that one of her first tasks as the director will be to build a store for the estate's collection. Museum stores have become a sticking point for Russian museums, and the question has been addressed by Putin at meetings with museum directors and the minister of culture.

Tolstoy told The Art Newspaper that stores are “a ripe, even over-ripe topic”, as so many museums are forced to keep their collections in poorly equipped memorial buildings. He said that he had managed to get Yasnaya Polyana on a federal funding programme to help build a museum store and visitor centre by 2018.

Tolstoy said he did not take on the role of adviser solely to advance the Tolstoy museum's cause, but that he will be keeping a close eye on the situation there. Vladimir Gruzdev, the regional governor of Tula, visited the estate in June and said that Leo Tolstoy must be promoted as the region's greatest brand for developing the local economy through tourism.

One of Vladimir Tolstoy's suggestions, supported by Gruzdev, is to unite the towns and villages surrounding Yasnaya Polyana into a single administrative entity, which would make it easier to gather support for the Tolstoy brand and to build hotels and transport links to bring more visitors to the estate.

The main house alone has reached its maximum capacity of 100,000 visitors a year (no more than 30-35 groups a day of no more than 15 people each are allowed in). Overall, 300,000 people a year visit the estate, but a museum store open to the public would increase visitor numbers.

“This way, while preserving the house and not subjecting it to any additional stress, we'll be able to increase the number of visitors to Yasnaya Polyana by almost five times, that is from 100,000 [people a year] to half a million over the next five to seven years,” Tolstoy told The Art Newspaper.

© The Art Newspaper. 28 June, 2012

In 1914 Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna stand on the balcony of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to accept salutes and homage from Russian troops departing for the Front.

More bad news for Lenin supporters this week as Russian President Vladimir Putin places the blame for Russia’s defeat in the First World War on Bolshevik policy that he calls ‘national treason’.

Speaking in the Upper House of the Russian Parliament Putin said the Bolsheviks, especially the ruling elite of the party, betrayed Russia’s national interests and allowed Germany to win the war with Russia even though eventually Germany was defeated. The President added that Bolsheviks had been so reluctant to admit their mistakes that in the Soviet period the First World War was called “the Imperialist War” and the authorities deliberately ignored the heroism of Russian soldiers in art and propaganda. Putin added that in reality the First World War was not an imperialist one.

The topic was raised when the upper house discussed the possibility of funding the maintenance of the Russian necropolis in Serbia – the burial place of at least 3,000 Russians, including 124 generals of the Tsarist Army. Putin stressed he supported the idea to fund the monument.

President Putin traditionally opposes the Communist Party of the Russian Federation – the heirs to the CPSU, but at the same time he has called the breakup of the Soviet Union ‘the biggest geopolitical disaster of the century.” Recently Russia is taking steps against what it sees as the ‘revisionism of history’ – manipulations that question the universally accepted opinion on most questionable issues of the past.

© Russia Today and Paul Gilbert. 27 June, 2012

The memorial cross where the remains of Russian Tsar Nicholas II's children, Alexey and Maria, were discovered, has been vandalized in the place outside Ekaterinburg said Archaeologist Sergey Pogorelov.

"My colleagues visited the place yesterday, examined the surrounding territory and found the cross in the shrubs nearby. The cross had been pulled out, removed and thrown away," Pogorelov, a researcher at the regional center for the protection of historical and cultural heritage, told Interfax on Monday.

"It is an outrageous act of hooliganism, or a provocation," the archaeologist said.

After the royal family was executed at the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg in 1918, the bodies were moved to an abandoned mine, Ganina Yama, not far from the city and thrown into a well. The well was not deep enough to hide the bodies, so they were lifted to be moved to another place.

As the convoy was moving it got stuck in a marshy area, called Porosyonkov Log, where the Bolsheviks dug a pit, and dumped the bodies into it after pouring sulfuric acid onto them. Nine of the 12 bodies were buried in the same place, and the two others, those of Tsesarevich Alexey and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria, were buried separately in the a wooded area.

The first remains were discovered back in 1978, but excavation work had not been done until 1991. Alexey's and Maria's remains were found much later, in 2007. All the bones were put through numerous laboratory tests, historical, archaeological and archival studies have been conducted, and anthropologists, dentists and genetics scientists examined them, which led to the conclusion that the remains found were those of members of the Russian royal family.

© Interfax and Royal Russia. 25 June, 2012

The new museum complex being constructed at the New Jerusalem Monastery will become a main exhibition centre of the Moscow Region.

 Its repository will also become the center for storage of collections of several museums located around Moscow.

The New Jerusalem Monastery housing the museum is a unique phenomenon in the history of Russian architecture. Its founder Patriarch Nikon (1605-1681) wanted to create near Moscow an image of the Holy Land - "Russian Palestine" - which became a grandiose architectural and landscape complex.

A new museum building is under construction now, and the museum repository will be ready by the end of 2012. Construction of the new museum building will be completed in 2012, with about one billion rubles planned to be spent on its construction.

© Ria.ru. 24 June, 2012