Secret passage to be opened in Pushkin’s apartment on Arbat

The Memorial Museum will be closed for re-exposition

Pushkin’s memorial apartment on the Arbat will soon be closed for restoration and re-exposition, only to reopen a year later in an updated form. The poet rented five rooms in house No. 53 in January 1831 from the Khitrovo noble family. A month later, he arranged a bachelor party there, and a few days later he brought his young wife Natalya Goncharova after the wedding. The first months of the Pushkin family life passed on the Arbat. In Soviet times, the house was occupied by communal apartments, so little of the historical interior has been preserved. About how they will restore the authentic environment, “MK” learned from the director of the State Museum A.S. Pushkin Evgeny Bogatyrev.

In the memorial apartment of Alexander Pushkin, the festival “February Evenings” started, which opened with a solo performance “Wedding” with Honored Artist of Russia Olga Kuzina in the title role. The wedding of the Pushkins took place on February 18, so the time of the festival and the topics are chosen to match. But this year there is a second binding, however, already in a minor key. The fact is that the director Andrey Berkutov once acted as the author of the production of “The Wedding”, whose earthly path was cut short a year ago – and also in February. The current festival will become an unspoken dedication to the artistic director of the museum and theater project of the Museum of A.S. Pushkin. Andrey Berkutov stood at the origins of the festival, which has been held every year in the museum for more than 20 years.

In these days of “February Evenings”, filled with polar emotions, viewers have the last chance to see the memorial apartment on the Arbat in the form in which it has been operating since 1986. Already in May, the museum will be closed for restoration and re-exposition in order to appear completely different by next summer.

– The house has a difficult fate. Whoever has not lived here, – says the director of the Pushkin Literary Museum Evgeny Bogatyrev. – In 1920, the house turned into a communal one. In the 1980s, our museum had to resettle about 50 residents from 20 apartments. The house is divided into many nooks and crannies, all partitions were demolished, the historical stucco molding on the ceiling was restored, and the space was cleared of layers. In 1986, the concept of the noble purity of the memorial space was formulated. But time passed, we did research, listened to our visitors, and it became clear that a different approach was needed.

Now in each of the halls the viewer’s attention is concentrated on one exposition item. In the first ballroom, this is the piano: concerts and performances are played here. When the Pushkins rented these rooms, they danced, sang and played here. In the next room, there is a desk at which Pushkin wrote (although historically this blue room was a dining room). Next to the desk is a portrait by Avdotya Elagina, painted in 1827 from nature. Pushkin’s friend Sergei Sobolevsky took this image abroad to not only talk about the Russian poet, but also show him. The desk topped with a portrait is set on a mirror podium. The display of exhibits in the following halls is also solved exposition. Among the rarities are the “bobik” table, at which Natalia Goncharova was engaged in needlework, and a marble bust of Pushkin, made from a death mask. Poetic emptiness is complemented by portraits of Pushkin’s contemporaries and friends, landscapes of that time and heavy velvet curtains. The re-exposition will fill the space – now the interiors, in which the first family days of the newlyweds passed, will be recreated here, albeit approximately.

“The drawings have not been preserved, but there are memories,” explains Evgeny Bogatyrev. – For example, from the notes of Pavel Vyazemsky, we know that Pushkin’s office was covered with outlandish purple wallpaper with golden flowers. There was a sofa that was framed by two shelves of books. From the ballroom one could get into the main dining room, where guests invited by the young couple were seated at the centipede table. The next room is an office where Pushkin worked and met with friends. And behind it is the bedroom of the young. The entrance for visitors there will be closed, because the poet wrote that this place is sacred, not for prying eyes. We have already found furniture that matches the descriptions.

The bedroom on one side led to the men’s area, on the other – to the women’s area: to the boudoir of Natalia Goncharova, who talked here with her friends, sisters and mother – a lady-in-waiting from the Zagryazhsky family. Pushkin did not immediately have a relationship with Natalya Ivanovna, so the family soon moved to St. Petersburg. The poet and his young wife lived on the Arbat for only three months, although the rooms were rented for six months, precisely for this reason. However, it was this place that became the first house where Pushkin got his own farm. “Before that, he lived in taverns,” Bogatyrev notes, relying on the testimonies of the poet’s contemporaries. Behind the boudoir of Natalia Goncharova there was a passage room for servants, of whom there were 27 in the house. Previously, there was a passage in the outer wall that led to the street – to the courtyard, to the kitchen, to the stables. And opposite him was a hidden and almost imperceptible door that led to the blue dining room, through which refreshments were carried to dinner parties. This “secret passage”, located under the stairs that lead to the upper floor (mezzanines with low ceilings – servants lived there), will now be restored. And the exit to the street will be indicated conditionally, so that it is clear how life in the house was organized.

Now the concept of renovation of the memorial museum is being examined, and work should begin in May. The museum, already with a memorial setting, will open on the poet’s birthday, that is, June 6, 2024. This transformation will become one of the stages of preparation for the 225th anniversary of Alexander Sergeevich.