Opening Celebration: Unveiling Three Exhibitions

Join The Museum of Russian Art for a festive evening of art, music, and community, a joyful celebration open to art lovers of every age. Explore the galleries, enjoy live music, and try creative activities inspired by the exhibitions. Discover treasures in the TMORA Shop, enjoy hot tea and chocolates offered in the spirit of Russian hospitality, and hear special remarks from museum leadership to mark the occasion.

This special gathering marks the opening of three new exhibitions:

• The World of Russian Fairy Tales explores beloved stories preserved through lacquer boxes, nesting dolls, children’s books, ornaments, and folk toys from TMORA’s collection.
• Two Siberian Artists at the End of the Soviet Era presents rare works by Novosibirsk painters Alexander Beliaev and Mikhail Ombish-Kuznetsov, offering a glimpse into Siberian art at the close of the Soviet epoch.
• Nadezhda Glazunova: Festive Art features vibrant watercolors that capture village holidays and folk traditions, including designs for Christmas and Easter cards.

Celebrate in style with festive dress if you wish. A visit from Baba Yaga would be most appropriate.

Museum admission applies and is payable at the door:
Adult $15 | Adult (65+) $13 | Student & Active Military $5 | Children ages 13 and under Free | TMORA Members Always Free

The World of Russian Fairy Tales explores the rich traditions of old Russian fairy tales, preserved for centuries through folk art and storytelling. Colorfully painted on lacquer boxes and nesting dolls, presented in children’s books and modeled as Christmas ornaments, these fairy tales continue to amaze and amuse, and they do more than that: they preserve ancient wisdom carried by generations of folk storytellers through centuries. Some are all-time classics such as “The Frog Princess,” “Vasilissa the Beautiful,” and “Ivan Tsarevich, The Firebird, and the Grey Wolf.” Others are lesser known, such as “The White Duck.”

Adding to the texture of this remarkable display of objects from TMORA’s holdings is the Museum’s collection of folk toys. Deer with golden horns, fantastic birds, northern centaurs from Kargopol, and other unique toys produced in the remote villages of northern and central Russia arrived from several private gifts.

The display includes artworks from TMORA’s permanent and research collections. We are grateful to the donors who, over the last twenty years, gifted their remarkable collections to the Museum; and now TMORA gladly shares them with the Minnesota public.

TMORA presents forty paintings created by two Novosibirsk artists at the end of the Soviet epoch. Not a lot of art reaches the Western Hemisphere from Siberia. This remarkable collection was brought to the US by American artist Kevin H. Adams who was invited by the Soviet government to tour Russia in 1989 with an exhibition of landscape paintings. Adams visited Novosibirsk where he met and befriended several local artists. Later, two Siberian artists, Alexander Beliaev and Mikhail Ombish-Kuznetsov, were permitted to travel to the U.S. with a touring exhibition of their work, hosted by Kevin Adams.

Since the time of their travel to the US, Beliaev and Ombish-Kuznetsov have become renowned Siberian artists. Ombish- Kuznetsov is known for his intriguing mix of photorealist and constructivist streaks, as well as his witty Trompe-l’œil (“deceive-the-eye”). He studied architecture in the Novosibirsk Construction Institute, became a member of the Soviet Artists’ Union in 1973, and later headed the Department of Monumental Art at the Novosibirsk Academy of Art and Architecture. Beliaev studied art at the Omsk Pedagogical Institute, was admitted to the Soviet Artists’ Union in 1983 and was later Professor of Studio Arts at the Novosibirsk Academy of Art and Architecture. Both artists have received multiple national and regional awards, and their works are preserved in museums and private collections in Siberia and wider Russia.

These rare works were donated to TMORA by Jay Ward Brown who inherited the collection in 2023.

This exhibition presents twenty-four watercolors by Nadezhda Glazunova. Professionally painted in the style of folk art, these delightful images feature traditional holidays in a Russian village and lifecycle events marking key transitional points in a peasant’s life, such as a wedding or a baptism. Glazunova’s book illustrations are included, as well. The paintings were brought to the US by the American author and artist Alexi Currier who first met Glazunova in Petrozavodsk in 1989. Some of the presented works were commissioned by Currier as designs for Christmas and Easter cards, while others are originals for book illustrations.

Glazunova’s artistic career began at a Soviet souvenir factory where she painted floral designs on mass-produced souvenirs. Her talent won her admission to a college specializing in traditional folk arts. She also worked with her husband, a woodworker, adding colorful designs to his works in wood.

Glazunova’s paintings are full of serene joy. They stir a warm echo of the past that glows from the distance with a golden haze of nostalgia. They reflect her longing for her country to return to life rooted in the traditions and rituals of the Russian Orthodox culture. Today, Glazunova lives in a wooden house near the golden-domed Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, one of the most renowned ancient monasteries of Orthodox Russia.