And the Louvre will visit us

200 years to the Kremlin’s museums to prepare the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Moscow Kremlin museums 40 million rubles. This was announced on Wednesday at a press conference by the head of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, Mikhail Shvydka.

Reception at the Grand Kremlin Palace on March 7 will become the official beginning of a series of anniversary celebrations. Congratulations from the President of the Russian Federation and the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' will sound. Guests and participants will be awarded commemorative medals created by the Moscow Mint specifically on the 200th anniversary of the Moscow Kremlin Museum-Reserve. A festive evening in honor of the two hundredth anniversary of the arms chamber in the Moscow International House of Music will unite employees, friends and partners of the museum. In honor of the anniversary, guests will receive commemorative badges and booklets telling about the history of the museum.

Representatives of the Louvre, the Vienna Museum of the History of Arts, the Bonn Kunstmuseum, the Warsaw Royal Castle, the Stockholm Royal Silver Chamber, the Royal Arsenal of Great Britain and other main museums of the world, as well as representatives of the federal authorities, the business elite will come to congratulate the museums of the Moscow Kremlin.

A cycle of large exhibitions was prepared for the anniversary. One of them - the “Russian emperors and the arms chamber” - will be held in March -October 2006. Its plot is directly related to the initial era of the history of the Kremlin’s museums and talks about the gradual transformation of the arms chamber from closed courtsie storage facilities into an “autocratic museum”. For the first time in the recent history of museums, the exposition will unfold at once at two exhibition venues: in the exhibition hall of the Assumption belfry and in the recently restored single -stage ward of the Patriarchal Palace. The history of the arms chamber will be revealed in direct connection with the personalities and biographies of Russian monarchs. Especially a catalog has been published to the vernissage.

In May, one of the most impressive exhibitions of the series “Imperial and Royal Treasury in Moscow” - “The Office of Augustus is strong” - representing the unique jewelry collection of the Dresden Museum “Green Code”, which has never been demonstrated in Russia. The exhibition will be held under the patronage of the leaders of Russia and Germany.

In October-November, a large-scale exhibition "Gifts to the Leads" will be held in the premises of the new arena. Visitors will be offered to look at a complex and ambiguous phenomenon - Soviet society through the prism of gifts by Soviet political leaders, from Lenin to Gorbachev.

In November, the exhibition "Gallery of the Jewelry of the Hermitage" will open, which will demonstrate rare monuments of jewelry from the collection of two gold pantry of the State Hermitage. Jewels - from Scythian gold to the products of jewelers of the beginning of the century - will also give an idea of the personal tastes of the Russian monarchs, who acquired these items for their collections.

Other 2006 exhibition projects include an exposition dedicated to the golden era of the imperial porcelain factory, “Drawing lesson in the family of Alexander III” and “Polar from the Kremlin”, an exhibition that shows the history of the capital in pre -revolutionary postcards with the types of Moscow.

As part of the anniversary, a series of exhibitions from the collection of museums of the Kremlin will be held in Saratov, Omsk, Chelyabinsk and Nizhny Novgorod.

The program of celebrating the anniversary involves the use of new exhibition space in the Kremlin. These are, first of all, exposition spaces in the one -post room of the Patriarchal Palace, in the bell tower of Ivan the Great, in the extension of the Arkhangelsk Cathedral. Construction and restoration programs will allow museums to get new areas. Part of the museum structures will be located outside the Kremlin walls, on the Volkhonka and in the Lebyazy Lane.

On the eve of the anniversary, it was decided to create a company of friends of the museums of the Moscow Kremlin. Each of its participants can make a personal contribution to the conservation and increase of cultural values and continue the traditions of Russian philanthropy.

02/08/2006 / Tatyana Nevskaya Material published in the newspaper No. 21 dated 09.02.2006.