Kunstkamera-Petersburg at African Antiques

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Kunstkamera Sint Petersburg

Kunstkamera

Peter the Great’s Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkammer)
3 University Emb., 199034, St.Petersburg, Russia Tel 7(812) 328-14-12

Yury Chistov, Director of the Museum of Anthropology
Valentin Vydrin, Head of the African Department

Next June 2006, there is scheduled an opening of a new African exposition of the Museum of Anthropology (Kunstkamera). In this relation, they are organizing a scholarly conference. The conference theme covers the entire problematics of the African anthropological museology and related matters.

They invite the submission of abstracts of papers, 500 words or less.

Deadline: The abstracts must be submitted electronically to the head
of African Department Valentin Vydrin, vydrine @yandex.ru, by April 5,
2006.

For visa support, let them know not later than April 5, 2006.

COLLECTIONS ON THE LIFE AND CULTURE OF THE AFRICAN PEOPLES

The first african item was received in 1836. The last receipt is dated 1997. The collections count 12,000 items from all regions of Africa. One third of them come from Ethiopia. The majority of the collections were formed in late 19th - early 20th century by such collectors as V. V. Junker, E. Golub, A. Mansfeld, G. Meyer, L. Frobenius, D. A. Olderogge ( library gift of particular value). as well as by the doctors of the Russian Sanitary Brigade in Ethiopia (A. I. Kokhanovsky, N. Brovtsyn, and others).

Recently, V. R. Arsenyev has made contributions in the collections and also U.S. Consul General Morris Hughes (see article below).

African art Exhibition

Area: 261 sq. m. (856 sq. ft.)
The exhibition consists of an Introductory Department which reflects the history of Africa and its ancient culture, and the Main Department, which introduces the traditional trades of African peoples (hoeing-agriculture, hunting, weaving, blacksmith's iron works, making dishes of pumpkins, and wood carving as well as ritual-magic objects and musical instruments from traditional African societies).

American diplomat donates his African art collection to St. Petersburg Kunstkamera Russian museum

by IRINA TITOVA 2005-04-18

An American diplomat donated his African art collection to a museum in St. Petersburg on Monday, saying that he wanted to give treasures from his days in Cameroon and Burundi to a city where he had experienced his happiest professional moments.

U.S. Consul General Morris Hughes, 59, who is set to retire and leave his post Tuesday, delivered his African collection to the city's Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, or Kunstkamera.

U.S. Consul General Morris Hughes, 59, who is set to retire and leave his post Tuesday, delivered his African collection to the city's Anthropology and Ethnography Museum or Kunstkamera.

"These things are a part of my life in diplomacy," he said at a ceremony marking the donation. "And I'm glad that this part of my home will belong to the museum."

Hughes gave the museum about 50 objects of everyday African life, such as a drum, vessel for beer and a mask. He said he had collected the objects during his six years of diplomatic service in Cameroon and Burundi.

Yuri Chistov, director of the Kunstkamera, said Hughes' collection would become an important part of the museum's African art and crafts collection, which is the biggest in Russia.

Hughes twice worked in Russia during Soviet times, but said his three years of work in St. Petersburg was "the best time in his diplomatic service" because he was able to witness monumental changes.

Hughes recalled how in 1984 he was detained - apparently by the KGB - at a marketplace after taking pictures of Russian sellers in a small town 400 kilometers (250 miles) outside Moscow.

The men, dressed in civilian clothes, took him to a police station and started to question him about the pictures.

"What it turned out was that I took a picture of a lady selling a watermelon, but the people she was selling a watermelon to were KGB! I didn't know they were KGB!" he said.

In those days, when he was immediately recognizable as an American, even in a restaurant Russians would immediately leave out of fear of being persecuted. The Soviet Union gave him the impression of "a country that had a black coat on it."

Now "the coat" is off and the sun is shining in, he said.

Things have changed since then, though.

However, he will take his entire collection of Russian souvenirs with him.

Hughes said he will continue to work part-time for the State Department as an inspector for different consulates.

Russia, he said, has changed from the Soviet days when "nothing was possible - to everything is possible."

IRINA TITOVA, Associated Press Writer & newsfromrussia.com