Worshipping Pavel Tretyakov

2012 MARKED THE 180TH ANNIVERSARY OF PAVEL TRETYAKOV'S BIRTH. ON DECEMBER 27 2012, THE DAY THAT THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY'S FOUNDER WAS BORN, THE CONFERENCE HALL ON LAVRUSHINSKY LANE HOSTED A PRESENTATION OF THE COLLECTOR'S DAUGHTER ALEXANDRA BOTKINA'S BOOK "PAVEL MIKHAILOVICH TRETYAKOV IN LIFE AND ART", A NEW EDITION OF WHICH HAS BEEN PREPARED BY A LARGE AND DEDICATED TEAM.

Marina Elzesser, the gallery's Deputy General Director for Education and Publishing, saying that the publication was an important one, expressed gratitude for supporting the project to the Pavel Tretyakov Charity Fund and personally to Viktor Bekhtiev, and handed museum staff the first, complementary copies of the book. Yelena Terkel, the chief of the gallery's Department of Manuscripts, said that this wonderful, most truthful and comprehensive family memoir (which had run into six editions already!) was hard to come by in book shops and had steadily enjoyed great demand among book lovers.

Especially inspirational was the part of the presentation when Yekaterina Khokhlova, a descendant of the author of the book - she is the great-granddaughter of Alexandra Botkina, and great-great-granddaughter of Pavel Tretyakov - read out several pages of the memoir. The image of Pavel Tretyakov was conjured up by a few skillfully chosen episodes from the book, about his travels to St. Petersburg and visit to the gallery of Emperor Alexander III, about the patriarchal tenor of life in Pavel Tretyakov's household, and his solicitude about his employees' well-being.

The evening concluded with the ceremony of presenting the Tretyakov Prize to the museum's staff. The awardees list for 2012 included: Lydia Torstensen, the curator of the vast collection of graphic art of 1850-1900 - the period when Pavel Tretyakov was collecting art; Tatiana Yudenkova, the Tretyakov Gallery's academic secretary responsible for the scholarly editing of Alexandra Botkina's book, who also initiated and authored several publications devoted to the Tretyakov brothers; and Valentina Sorokina, the chief curator of the Nesterov Art Museum in Ufa, Bashkortostan.

The recipients of the award were cordially congratulated by the General Director of the Tretyakov Gallery Irina Lebedeva, Moscow City Government Chairman Vladimir Platonov, and President of the Pavel Tretyakov Charity Fund Viktor Bekhtiev.

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