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An exhibit presented by the University Library and curated by Janet Crayne, Head, Slavic and East European Division
Online Exhibit
Exhibit Hours
Special Collections
Library, 7th Floor, South Building and North Building Lobby
Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library
920 N.
University Ave.
Opening Program
8 p.m., Special
Collections Library, 7th Floor, South Building
Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library
920 N. University Ave.
St. Petersburg
and Early 20th-Century Russian Literature and the Arts
A lecture by Kelly Miller, visiting assistant
professor, Department of Russian Language and Literature, Dickinson
College
About the Exhibit
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The Russian city of St. Petersburg acquired the nickname "Window
on the West," partly due to its location on the western fringes
of Russia, and partly due to its blend of west European and Russian
culture. Moscow was considered to be the bastion of 1000 years
of Russian political, cultural, and religious tradition, while
St. Petersburg was considered to be its modern and innovative
antithesis.
St. Petersburg: Window on the East/Window on the West
will focus on the University
Library's own St. Petersburg treasures, which span over 150
years of the city's history. An early city plan held by the Library
will be presented both in the original and as a high-resolution
computer file. Journals published in St. Petersburg from the turn-of-the-twentieth-century
will provide illustrations of the artistic activity that characterized
it as the Silver Age of Russian Art. Also on display will be first
editions by writers Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandel'shtam,
and Vladimir Mayakovsky, as well as a diary penned by Lily Brik
and a publisher's mark created by Mstislav Dobouzhinsky. The exhibit
includes works by world-famous personalities in dance, theater,
and music relating to Ballet Russe, such as correspondences between
Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov concerning Serge Diaghilev
and hand-painted costume designs by Lev Bakst for Vaclav Nijinsky.
This exhibit also presents an opportunity to announce the Library's
acquisition of the Ardis
Press collection, which is now available to scholars. Based
in Ann Arbor in the 1970s and 1980s, Ardis Press specialized in
Russian literature and featured the major Russian authors from
the past two centuries in its monograph publications and/or journal,
Russian Literary Triquarterly. Thanks to Ellendea Proffer
Teasley and the legacy of her husband, Carl Proffer, University
of Michigan's Library now owns a collection of original manuscripts
and typescripts, correspondences, books, photographs, and proofs,
much of which relate to the Library's Saint Petersburg treasures.
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For further information about the exhibit, contact:
University Library
Janet Crayne
734.936.2348
jcrayne@umich.edu
Image credit:
From the ballet, La Peri, costume designed for
"Iskander"
Done by Lev (Leon) Bakst in 1911, described as being in the collection
of
M. Jacques Doucet.
Hand-painted plate #42 from: The Decorative Art of Leon Bakst.
London: The Fine Art Society, 1913.
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