The Moscow exhibition for the 225th anniversary of Pushkin was decorated with a nine-meter portrait-banner

The 225th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth has clearly become an occasion for Russian museums to organize a “competition.” GMIRLI was the first to join the game, who in the fall of 2023 launched a project about three anniversaries: Pushkin, Tyutchev, Aksakov, and now he is preparing three more in his different departments. The Lyceum Museum in Tsarskoe Selo is planning to completely renovate the exhibition by the summer, and the Moscow State Pushkin Museum has organized the exhibition “Pushkin. 225”, connecting 44 friendly museum, archival and research institutions to it. To see all the new exhibits, the MK correspondent had to spend almost two hours in the estate on Prechistinka, without letting go of the guide booklet.

The inner “courtyard” of the ancient Khrushchev-Seleznev estate, where the State Pushkin Museum has been located since the middle of the last century, is covered with a glass roof, which forms a separate space – it was there that a banner portrait of the poet of unprecedented size was placed: nine meters in height, eight in width, and four smaller portraits. Plus, a floor-to-ceiling installation was built from the manuscripts. And near the entrance they placed a sculpture of a classic in the image of an ancient warrior. All halls intended for temporary exhibitions were completely “rebooted”, the main exhibition was updated with “guest” exhibits. Visitors who visited here a couple of weeks ago, on the day of Alexander Sergeevich’s death, as they say, will not recognize the former museum.

Perhaps the last time Moscow could boast of such a scale of celebration was in 1937, the centenary of Pushkin’s death. The anniversary of Stalin’s reign is described by a poster with for some reason a smiling boy and girl reading a solid volume with Pushkin the child on the cover, invitation card number 1 to a ceremonial meeting at the Bolshoi Theater, issued in the name of Alexander Shcherbakov, the first secretary of the Moscow Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ( b), as well as the decision of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR to transform the All-Union Pushkin Exhibition into a museum with the personal signature of Krupskaya.

If we go further chronologically, we should mention front-line Pushkinianism, that is, a photo of the Moscow monument to Pushkin against the backdrop of a balloon (December 1941), a photo of a view of Pushkin Square with a Soviet tank in the foreground, a collection of works pierced by a German shell fragment in the summer 1943 in the Sinyavinsky swamps near Leningrad.

And about a New Year’s card from the Second World War in the “Greetings from Moscow” format with an uplifting quote:

Are there not enough of us? Or from Perm to Taurida,

From their cold rocks to fiery Colchis,

…

Sparkling with steel bristles,

The Russian land will not rise?..

The topic “Pushkin and the war” naturally turns into the topic “Pushkin and the special operation”: it turns out that there are modern military patches/chevrons with the image of the poet and the caption “we will protect!”. Or with the same author’s portrait and somewhat distorted quotes: “God help you, my friends” (from the poem of 1827, in the original “God help you”) and “You are my dear brothers” (from “The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven heroes”, in the original source “brothers”).

But the most effective thing is the “Pushkin” soldier’s helmet.

When there are hundreds of artifacts in front of you, you are drowning in the massif: a newspaper description of the project “Pushkin. 225″ can be divided into five publications – there will be enough material.

Pushkin in the space of the theater – separately, and this theme is shown, for example, by the costumes of the Petrograd Opera of the 20s of the last century (Rozalia Gorskaya, a legendary person, wore one of them).

Kinopushkina – separately. How can one ignore the sketches of historically accurate clothes by Elsa Rapoport and the scenery by Sergei Mandel for the unrealized film by Sergei Gerasimov “Pushkin”, which was supposed to be shot in 1951 at the film studio named after. Gorky?

The number of original paintings associated with the poet, his friends, numerous lovers and heroes of the works also goes into the dozens – Benois is especially widely represented, plus Levitan, Repin, Vasnetsov, Petrov-Vodkin, Konstantin Korovin, even the typical heroes of Vasya Lozhkin in the painting of 2024 they unanimously raise their mugs “For Pushkin.”

Among the things that “remember” the great poet on a tactile level, it is worth mentioning his handwritten autographs in albums (manuscripts that we see in museums are in 99% of cases copies, since the paper requires archival storage, but the pages on display this time Alexander Sergeevich’s hand actually touched).

But the most valuable thing is a chair from Mikhailovsky, a top hat given by Pushkin to Vyazemsky, a personal signet, a vest, a case for a paper knife and a business card from the 1830s. And, finally, objects that make a true connoisseur feel slightly dizzy: wedding crowns, which, according to legend, were used during the wedding of Pushkin and Natalya Goncharova, and without any legends, the ring that undoubtedly belonged to Natalya Nikolaevna (given by her husband on the anniversary of the engagement) and her earrings with diamonds.

These literally and figuratively treasures overshadow everything else, although it would seem that there are real uniforms of two emperors at once (you never know how many of them the rulers of a huge empire had).

According to the most conservative estimate, there are about a thousand exhibits – ancient ones, created long before the birth of Pushkin, contemporary with him, or created today, like a model of the world of “Ruslan and Lyudmila” in the style of a Disneyland map, and the model is distinguished by its detail: here the fabulous Head, here is the source of living and dead water, and a little further is the mound, the place of death of the main character.

Once you look at it, the work will become understandable and will come closer to you, and getting closer to literature and its figure is the key task of any writer’s museum.