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HILLWOOD MUSEUM & GARDENS
ACQUIRES LEADING COLLECTION OF RARE RUSSIAN BOOKS
Washington, D.C. – Hillwood Museum and Gardens, the former
Washington, D.C. estate of visionary collector and philanthropist Marjorie
Merriweather Post, announces the addition of an important collection of
rare Russian books to its Library. The collection of approximately three
hundred volumes is from the personal library of Dr. Nicholas Shoumatoff of
Bedford, New York. Within the history of American Slavic Studies, the Shoumatoff
library has served as the principle resource for the monumental cultural
history of Russia, The Icon and the Axe by James Billington.
Shoumatoff’s rare book collection provides an historic overview of
religious art as well as decorative arts in imperial Russian culture and
is an important complement to Hillwood Museum and Gardens’ collection of
imperial Russian art, which is considered to be the most comprehensive
outside Russia. Available to the
public by appointment only, Hillwood’s Library contains approximately
7,500 volumes and more than 10,000 auction catalogues that focus on French
and Russian fine and decorative arts. “We are thrilled to have been
able to acquire this magnificent and rare assemblage of Russian books so
suited to our collection,” said Frederick J. Fisher, Executive Director.
“This purchase perfectly dovetails with the museum’s mission
and vision, which declares that Hillwood will impart a scholarly voice on
Russian and Western European decorative arts in the greater Washington,
D.C. region.”
The Shoumatoff collection will enhance the
Library’s holdings with valuable resource materials such as
Rovinskii’s multi-volume Narodnoe kartinki and his six-volume
collection of Russian portrait engravings, as well as design books by
Viktor Butovskii and Vladimir Stasov. The
collection includes catalogues of important pre-revolutionary art
collections (M.P. Botkin, Khanenko) and inventories of the great monasteries
and churches. There also are significant works on Russian icons and iconography,
including the fundamental 19th-century texts written by
pioneers in the field such as Filimonov, Rovinskii, Golyshev, Kondakov,
and Likhachev.
Overall, the scope and quality of art historical
scholarship in pre-revolutionary Russia is represented in the collection
with important works by several generations of archaeologists and art
historians, from Dmitri Rovinskii in the mid 19th-century to
Igor Grabar and Nikodim Kondakov in the early 20th-century.
The Shoumatoff collection was originally assembled in the 1920s and
1930s by Andre Avinoff, a connoisseur of religious icons and a former
director of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Upon his death, the collection was transferred to Avinoff’s
sister Elizabeth Shoumatoff, a Russian-born society portraitist and the
mother of Dr. Nicholas Shoumatoff, who, in turn, bequeathed the collection
to her son.
Hillwood Museum and Gardens is located on 4155 Linnean Avenue, in Northwest Washington,
D.C., overlooking Rock Creek Park. The museum is open in January and from March through
December on Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on select evenings and
Sundays. Hillwood is closed on all national holidays except Veteran’s Day. Admission
is by reservation only. For reservations call the toll free line at 1/877-HILLWOOD or
202/686-5807, or fax 202/966-7846. For
general information call 202/686-8500 or visit the museum website at www.hillwoodmuseum.org. Hillwood Museum and
Gardens is an accredited museum with the American Association of Museums. |
