The widow told what is planned for the 90th anniversary of Mikhail Zhvanetsky

The writer’s office was kept intact by his family and is ready to be turned into an installation

March 6, 2024 marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding satirist writer, artist and TV presenter Mikhail Zhvanetsky. Recently, a day of his memory was held in St. Petersburg: in the Theater. V.F. Komissarzhevskaya opened a temporary exposition “Zhvanetsky and Gabriadze”, and the performance “In fragments of one’s own happiness” based on the little-known works of Mikhail Mikhailovich took place there. But the main events are planned, of course, for the anniversary year. The correspondent of “MK” talked about this with the widow of Zhvanetsky Natalya.

– We have a number of ideas. The exhibition we did was a trial one. There were very few materials: ten drawings, ten manuscripts and twelve photographs. It’s not even 1% of what we have. But it was necessary to understand how interesting it is for the public. And we made sure that it is interesting! Everyone took pictures, everyone remembered something, so we will expand the scale.

– What will fans of Zhvanetsky’s work see exactly next year?

– We plan to prepare a huge amount of material for the show. Now we are negotiating with the Moscow Museum of Russian Impressionism in order to place something with them, they are very positive about this idea. Negotiations are also underway with a number of private galleries. In addition, we were put on the plan by the State Literary Museum. They themselves will make an exhibition dedicated to Zhvanetsky. Maybe we and Peter will come back again.

There is also an idea to make an exhibition of the authors’ drawings for Misha’s books: in addition to Rezo Gabriadze, we have many excellent authors. For example, Yuri Norstein and Francesca Yarbusova. They illustrated a book of Zhvanetsky’s stories about animals – we will release it by the 90th anniversary. Plus, we will show the public rare things: a briefcase, notebooks, handwritten books created by Mikhail Mikhailovich. In addition, we have kept his office in an untouchable form – it is closed, where all the objects and papers lie on the table. Therefore, you can make an installation of the cabinet somewhere.

– It turns out that in order to get to the event about Zhvanetsky, the audience needs to go to Moscow and St. Petersburg?

– Not necessary. We will definitely add a number of cities to the memorable events, Novosibirsk is definitely with us.

– By the way, what will be the final fate of the current exhibition in the St. Petersburg theater?

– There she will be twenty days, a maximum of a month. And then he will move to the St. Petersburg National Russian Library – it is both a museum and a repository of manuscripts and books. Later I will ask – I still don’t know how – that all this is not lost in space, but transferred to different libraries. I think this is a very achievable goal.