The “Hermitage of Russian Culture” is waiting for changes

Alina Saprykina appointed director of the Sergiev Posad Museum

Sergiev Posad Historical and Art Museum-Reserve is waiting for big changes. On August 25, Alina Saprykina, who previously held the post of chief curator of the All-Russian Museum of Decorative Arts, was appointed its executive director. Soon she promises to present a concept for the development of the museum, which academician Dmitry Likhachev called the Hermitage of Russian Culture, for the coming years.

The Sergiev Posad Museum includes four sites, and the collection includes 200,000 exhibits. The basis of the museum collection is the values ​​of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra – for the most part these are objects of ancient Russian art, but there are also paintings, graphics, objects of decorative and applied art in the collection. According to the Minister of Culture and Tourism of the Moscow Region Vasily Kuznetsov, “the priority tasks of the new executive director of the museum are the extremely careful modernization of museum spaces and their modern understanding, event content.”

So far, with event content, not very much. That is, the exhibitions are opening (for example, on August 22, the project “Returned from Oblivion” was presented in the Eastern Building of the Konny Dvor Museum Complex, where they showed works of church art from the collection of Optina Pustyn), but little is said about them. The task of Alina Saprykina is to change the situation, and such coups are not new to her. She managed to make the Museum of Moscow, which she headed from 2013 to 2019, fashionable and interesting, add charm to the Artplay creative space, where she was art director for 8 years, and breathe new life into the Museum of Decorative Arts. But here the task is more difficult, because we are talking about a conservative site.