History and Culture: The Exhibition of Hand-written All Ages Scrapbooks in Moscow

The evolution of the scrapbooking technique from the late XVIII to the beginning of the XXI century (from the public museums and private collections) is presented at titled "These days the albums are thinned out,” the poetic line of Maximilian Voloshin, exhibition running from August 29 to November 17, 2013, at the State Pushkin Museum (Moscow).

The exhibition features nearly 200 belonging to the different periods handwritten albums and excepted pages. The essential part of the exhibition falls to more than 40 albums from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, including those belonging to the famous families, with pictures and autographs of legendary artists and historical figures. Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), the State Literary Museum, and the State Museum of Vladimir Mayakovsky are also presented the albums from their own collections. Quite interesting part of the exhibition come to the books and single pages from private collections, above all, from the collection of the well known art gallery "Kovcheg" (that means “the ark”). "Kovcheg" displays an amount of interesting findings in albums and notebooks belonging to the representatives of violent and controversial XX century.

The scrapbooks were part and parcel of way of life of upper class in XIX century. They were not merely begotten by a noble culture, but literally mirrored their epoch, remaining an invaluable source of information about the bygone era. Along with the images of manor houses and their interiors album pages conveyed to us the portraits of their landlords, households, close friends and ambience, as well as the details of their way of life, the owners’ characters, bearings and attitudes.

As we approach the twentieth century, secular scrapbooking fun transformed into a special, consciously chosen form of creative writing. Often, the album turned out to be one the tool of capturing rapidly changing sights - a customary fellow traveller during creative journeys.