S. A. Korsun, Iu. E. Berezkin

Aleuty: katalog kollektsii Kunstkamery [Muzei antropologii i etnografii im. Petra Velikogo] (Aleutian collection of the Kunstkamera [Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography]) ; .

St. Petersburg: Kunstkamera, 2014. Sewn cl. Peter the Great gave the impulse to collect first by founding the museum called the Kunstkamera and then by sponsoring expeditions (for example, to eastern Siberia in 1724) with explicit instructions to describe native peoples and collect artifacts. Published here in the first complete catalogue of the museum’s Aleutian Collection are 555 items — carved talismans, musical instruments, masks, woven bags, ivory figurines, and wooden hats with long beautifully painted brims. As with the other collection catalogues on North American peoples of the West coast, the Kunstkamera has the advantage of having formed its collection early — most works came to the museum in the second half of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth before Europeanizing of settlers and missionaries could affect traditional cultures. The Russian Academy of Sciences as sponsor or participant of many of the expeditions meant that scientists and artists accompanied explorers and traders to create written and visual records. The most fruitful expedition in the history of the collection was that of I. G. Voznesenskii from 1839 to 1848, many of whose finds are published here. 382 p., 29 cm, approx. 600 color and b/w illus., Rus. Item #3174
ISBN: 9785884312616

Price: $128.00