Nadezhda Tregub

CURRENT EXHIBITION

Nadezhda Tregub
Vasily Vatagin – Master of the Animal World

#4 2008 (21)

The 125th anniversary of Vasily Alexeevich Vataginʼs birth was marked in 2008, and proved a good reason to present the masterʼs work more extensively. The spectrum of his work is broad - illustrations for academic as well as art books, painting, graphic art, lithography, and sculpture. Vatagin (1884-1969) was the author of books about animals for children and adults, a museum space designer, and a teacher. He created a whole gallery of portraits of renowned men of arts and science. It is hard to believe that one person achieved all of this. He made wall-paintings on themes of zoology, paleontology and zoogeography. The State Darwin Museum collaborated with Vatagin since 1908. The museumʼs galleries include more than 50 of Vataginʼs paintings and sculptures, and one may say that Vataginʼs works are exhibited in the Museum every day. But the Darwin Museumʼs collections hold many more works that have not yet been shown to a mainstream audience. The Darwin Museum, together with the Tretyakov Gallery, has prepared two major exhibitions of more than 150 paintings, sculptures, and works of graphic art. Many visitors, who know Vatagin as a sculptor, will see his large-scale paintings.

HERITAGE

Nadezhda Tregub
Zinaida Serebryakova. Nude Portraits

#1 2008 (18)

There must be a special stimulus for any new major exhibition of an artist, and perhaps several publications about Zinaida Yevgenievna Serebryakova (1884–1967) proved just that. Two St. Petersburg scholars prepared two monographs about Serebryakova practically simultaneously, and independently from one another. 2004 saw the publication of a book about the artist written by an expert from the Russian Museum Vladimir Kruglov, while an album by the renowned art historian Alla Rusakova came out in 2006. Although the two books appeared in quick succession one after another, they almost never repeat each other either in their text or choice of illustrations. The artist is so impressive – and her artistic heritage so considerable – that researchers can tackle her legacy from a variety of different angle

Nadezhda Tregub
The “Museums in Russia” Internet Portal – 10 Years on the Web

#4 2006 (13)

It might be naïve to call it a jubilee, though such figures do tend to have some magic influence on people’s mind, and there’s a tradition to review the work done as such round dates approach. The internet portal “Museums in Russia” www.museum.ru started in 1996, so it is still early to summarize its activity, but the results achieved during these years deserve mention.