|
The Historic and Art Museum
Ivangorod Fortress incorporates the Ivangorod Art Museum exhibits
and the Ivangorod Fortress as such.
The Art Museum centers
around the envaluable donation of Mikhail Pototsky, son of
the renowned artist Aleksandra Shchekatikhina-Pototskaya,
a pupil of Ivan Bilibin. The Pototsky collection includes
marvellous pieces by Bilibin, Shchekatikhina-Pototskaya and
other painters belonging to the art group "World of Art".
Besides creating individual art, the members of the group
that started as a circle of friends, mostly artists, at the
turn of the 19th to the 20th century initiated innovative
cultural projects not only in fine arts but stage and decorative
art, publishing and book illustration. Their contribution
to rousing the public interest in the history of Russian art
and to popularizing Russian culture abroad (through famous
Dyagilev's Russian Seasons) is tremendous.
The Ivangorod Art
Museum collections are exhibited in the former private house
of a local merchant and also include artifacts and archival
materials documenting the history and traditional culture
of the region, personalia and letters of famous Russians like
Fiodor Dostoevsky, examples of folk art.
Another exhibit of
the museum is located in a separate building that served an
office for another local trader - Orlov - in the mid 19th
century and is devoted to the historical roles of the fortresses
located in Leningrad region displaying objects of archeological
digs and remarkable models of strongholds.
The Ivangorod Fortress
is a special place to visit. The strategic position of the
fortress not far from the Baltic coast often made it a battlefield
of the Russians and Swedes. Walking along the old walls and
towers, a visitor can have a taste of 400 years' history of
the place. Russian screen version of Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
directed by Grigory Kozintsev was shot here.
|