Museums of Russia: Exhibition “Panorama of Empires” launched in Tsaritsyno

A new exhibition “Panorama of Empires. Journey of the heir cesarevitch Nikolai Alexandrovich to the East in 1890-1891” has opened in the Grand Palace of the State Museum-Reserve “Tsaritsyno” (Moscow).

A large-scale exhibition, which encompasses 1166 exhibits put on show in 11 halls of the Grand Palace, – offers its visitors a unique opportunity to see the East as it appeared before cesarevich and his travelling companions in 1890–1891. It has been for the first time that Moscow succeeded to unveil such a unique collection of diverse historical articles provided by 13 museums, archives and libraries of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Orenburg, Chita: magnificent gifts, presented to cesarevich, rare artifacts, documents, maps and photographs of that time. The exhibits are accompanied by commentaries of historians, as well as unpublished notes from the diaries of cesarevich himself, texts of his contemporaries and extracts from the press of that time. The exhibition covers over 400 exhibits which had been brought by cesarevich from the journey to the East from the collection housed at the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), as well as 381 exhibits from the Russian Museum of Ethnography.

The novelty of the project, in contrast to the exhibitions initiated in Russia and abroad which focus on the subject of the East, lies in the conceptual idea and design. Following the august traveler the visitor of the exhibition views panorama of empires of late 19th c. – “own” and “alien” East: the Ottoman Empire – Egypt; the British Empire – Aden, India, Ceylon; French possessions in Indo-China and ancient eastern empires – China and Japan. Halls of the Siberian part of the exposition is an impressive panorama of “our Asia”, as it was called by contemporaries. When crossing its vast lands from the coast of the Pacific Ocean to the Urals, cesarevich saw peoples of Russia: Cossacks, urban population, peasants and representatives of Siberian ethnic groups.

The exposition displays collections of costumes of Siberian peoples, Indian fabrics and weapons, Chinese and Japanese fans, models of ships and series of plastic images showing peoples of the east, their dwellings and many other items, which was either presented or bought by cesarevich in the East. The exhibition is open up to May 15 2011.