The Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow after the October Revolution in the correspondence of B. A. Turaev and T. N. Borozdina (1917-1920)

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the history of the Museum of Fine Arts named after Emperor Alexander III at the Imperial Moscow University (now the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the Lomonosov Moscow State University) during 1917-1920 based on the correspondence of B. A. Turaev and T. N. Borozdina. B. A. Turaev (1868-1920), founder of Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Russia, Egyptologist, Professor at the St. Petersburg Imperial University, was curator of the Museum’s Department of the Classical Orient. T. N. Borozdina (1886-1959) was his student and assistant. She worked at the Museum since its opening in 1912. The letters from T. N. Borozdina to B. A. Turaev preserved in the State Hermitage Archive contain a lot of new and important information about the Museum and its staff after the October Revolution of 1917. The letters touch upon issues of preserving the Museum collections in the unheated building, publishing and scientific activities, guided tours and lectures about Ancient Egypt. In her letters, T. N. Borozdina also paid much attention to the difficult living and working conditions in post-revolutionary Moscow. In addition to the correspondence, the authors of the article use a variety of documents from the Department of Manuscripts of the Pushkin Museum.