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Indepth Arts News:
"Stroganoff: The Palace and Collections of a Russian Noble Family"
2000-07-02 until 2000-10-01
Kimbell Art Museum
Fort Worth, TX,
USA
Stroganoff is one of the most familiar names in Russian history, that of an extraordinary
family whose impact over five centuries included aggressive entrepreneurship as well as
social vision and patronage of the arts. An exhibition of over 230 treasures collected by
the Stroganoff family will be shown at only two venues in the United States. The
exhibition will include icons and antiquities, palace furnishings, and paintings of the
greatest European masters from Botticelli to Poussin. These will be arrayed as they were
in the Stroganoff Palace, one of the grandest 18th century buildings on St. Petersburg's
principal thoroughfare, the world-famous Nevsky Prospekt.
The exhibition will draw upon the collections of The State Hermitage and The State
Russian Museums to assemble works of art acquired, sponsored, or commissioned by
members of the Stroganoff family from the late 16th century to the early 20th century.
Russian curators and museum directors have joined in the effort to bring together this
spectacular visual saga, the story of how one family shaped the culture of a nation.
A segment of the exhibition will focus on exquisite icons from the famed Stroganoff
school, with a selection never before seen outside Russia. At the exhibition's core will be
a re-creation of the famed Paintings Gallery of the Stroganoff Palace, reuniting for the
first time Stroganoff masterworks by Botticelli, Poussin, Van Dyck, Giordano, Watteau,
and others. Additional highlights include the great malachite basin on a gilded stand from
the Stroganoff Palace, now on view in the Malachite Room of the Hermitage.
While the world is aware through several exhibitions of the wealth, style, and impact of
generations of the Russian Imperial Family, this exhibition and the related publication
will be the first to explore the mythic Stroganoffs, one of the great noble families of
Russia. Moreover, it will illustrate a case history of the value of art patronage in the
development of a nation.
The exhibition has been organized by the Portland Art Museum, in Portland, Oregon,
where it will make its international debut February 19–May 31, 2000. The Portland Art
Museum has worked in cooperation with The State Hermitage Museum and The State
Russian Museums, and the coordinating curator for the exhibition is Penelope
Hunter-Stiebel, formerly of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After its showing at the
Kimbell Art Museum in the summer of 2000, the exhibition will be seen in Paris and St.
Petersburg.
IMAGE:
Self-Portrait, 1800,
by Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun.
© 2000 The State Hermitage Museum,
St.Petersburg
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