Coming in 1996 to Washington, the museum founder, Uli Zislin, began to
create a new world of Russian culture.Thus started the "washington Museum of
Russian Poetry and Music," taking up three rooms of the apartment of Uli Michailovich, where he placed
30 collections. Having visited this museum in 2005, a direct descendant of Alexander
Pushkin, New Your poet and literary worker
Alexander A. Pushkin, wrote in his journal this
epigram:
"Passion carries Uli Zislin,
Question taunts me all the time:
The man lives
in the museum
Where does he himself reside?"
The museum opened in Autumn 1995 and was
reconstructed in 2002 and 2011. It was visited by Russian culture affeccionades from 32 cities in
21 states of America and 35 cities of 15 nations of the world, including 15 Russian cities.
The museum conducted in America a series of large
and small literary and musical performances (altogether over 400, including 25 on
television and radio in New York,Washington, Baltimore and Boston).
There have been over 200 publications in USA,
Russia, Israel and Ukraine about the work in the archives of the Museum, covering poets Marina
Tsvetaeva, her sister Anastasia and son Georgi (Mura), along with Osip Mandelshtam,
Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev, Ilya Ehrenburg, L. Ozerova, N. Rubtsova,
Bulat Okhudzhava, Vladimir Vysotsky and Russian language in America (among them, more than
50 about Tsvetayeva). The museum has onmany occasions been mentioned in SMI of these
countries (especially in American editions). The Washington museum has a widely visited website
(www.museum.zislin.com).
The most significant exhibitions in the museum
regarding Tsvetaeva are as follows:
- Genuine autographs of Ariandna Efron and Anastasia
Tsvetayeva,
- personal accounts by Anastasia Tsvetaeva and Michael Gertschenzon,
- original
portraits of Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelshtam, Nikolai Gumilev, Anna
Akhmatova, Anastasia Tsvetaeva,
- a large collection of photographs;
- video recordings of
conversations with Olga Truchaveva;
- video and audio recordings of Tsvetaeva evening in
America;
- the vase "Red Ashberry" (work of Washington sculptor Lee Prayer);
- floor from the
room of Marina Tsvetaeva on the Borisoglebsky Alley;
- 151 leaves of autographs of
Marina Tsvetaeva from the Bachmet archive;
- copies of a graphic painting by Marina Tsvetaeva
from the RGB archive;
- the first edition of Marina Tsvetaeva's prose in a separate book (New
York, 1953, from the archive of E. Altshuller);
- an unpublished photo of Alexey
Eisner;
- a recording by Valentina Tsvetkova of readions of Marina Tsvetaeva by Anastasia
Tsvetayeva;
- a recording of a conversation by A.N. Brodelschikova, films of Tsvetaeava;
- and few more video
and audio programs and recordings.
The pride of the museum is a bronze medal from 1899,
released in the memory of Pushkin's centennial, along with its gypsum copy, created in
Lithuania in for 200th anniversary of the poet. It's not possible not to mention the Pushkin
calendar from 1937, two books of the poems and the writings of descendant Alexander A.
Pushkin, who lived in New York. Mikhail Lermontov is presented with an nonstandard graphic
portrait and rare two-tome edition of his works in 1891 with illustrations by Vasnetsov,
Korovin and of course Vrubel. Here the drawings are organized with an artistic depiction
of the book by a professor of arts Leonid Pasternak to the poem "On the death of the
poet" and play "Masquerade." In the museum there is also a catalog of the exhibition of work by
L. Pasternak, which was given to the Moscow museum of Leo Tolstoy and etc.
The museum is an imitation to cultural events in
USA. For example, the Tsvetaeva bonfires (there have been 16 of these bonfire-literary
readings in nature) and the Tsvetaeva song festivals (2003-2004), the Russian public library
(existing for more than five years), the alleys of Russian poets and composers (existing
for around 10 years), the chamber concerts of Russian music and performances by Russian
musicians, etc. In the museum was conceived the idea of conducting Tsvetaeva bonfires,
beginning in 2002, creating a multi-pronged museum of Russian culture for the broader American
public (in 2011 there is an application for its creation around Rockville, a suburb of
Washington).
One of the principles, concerning the Washington museum
of literature and music, which in 2012 turns 15, is making the visitors familiar
with other museums and private collections dedicated to the great Russian poets. In the
Washington museum are presented, along with Marina Tsvetaeva and her family, the poetical
museums of Alexander Pushkin, Michail Lermontov, Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Blok,
Maximillian Voloshin, Nikolai Nekrasov, Sergei Klytchkov, Sergei Yesenin, Nikolai Rubtsov,
Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, Alexey Koltsov.
