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Icons in Museums: Bridging Art and Experience
Monday, January 6 from 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Free – $10
Icons in Museums: Bridging Art and Experience
Monday, January 6, 2025 | 6:30 – 8:00 PM
The Museum of Russian Art | Main Gallery
The Museum of Russian Art invites you to an evening exploring the fascinating world of Orthodox Christian icons and their place in museum collections worldwide. Set against the backdrop of Masterpieces of Sacred Art from the Oleg Kushnirskiy Collection, this special event brings together leading experts for an engaging forum on Orthodox icons.
Whether you are an art enthusiast, a history lover, or simply curious, all are welcome!
Featured Speakers:
Dr. Konstanze Runge: Icons in Museums: Collecting and Exhibiting Orthodox Christian Art in Frankfurt/Germany
Museum curator Dr. Konstanze Runge explores the history and significance of collecting and exhibiting icons in Germany. Using the example of the Icon Museum of the City of Frankfurt am Main, she reflects on the creation of the collection and the fascination of German collectors for icons in the second half of the 20th century. Dr. Runge provides vivid insights into current exhibition practices and examines the challenges and opportunities of housing Orthodox Christian art in the multicultural urban environment of Frankfurt. She will also address questions such as: How can we preserve and interpret religious objects today? What strategies can museums employ to guide Orthodox art collections into the future?
Dr. Wendy Salmond: Russian Icons through American Eyes: A Forgotten History
Between the 1917 Revolution and the end of World War II, Russian icons experienced a surge of popularity in the United States. Souvenir hunters brought them back from Soviet Russia, American museums hosted them in traveling exhibitions, and galleries sold them as Imperial treasures. Dr. Wendy Salmond revisits this fascinating moment in American engagement with Russian icons and explores how it compares to the contemporary experience of visitors to TMORA’s Masterpieces of Sacred Art from the Oleg Kushnirskiy Collection.
Additional Contributors:
The evening will also feature remarks by Ilya Kushnirskiy, Director of the Collection and son of collector Oleg Kushnirskiy, whose remarkable icons are showcased in the exhibition. TMORA’s curator, Dr. Masha Zavialova, will moderate the program and facilitate the audience Q&A session.
Event Details:
- FREE for TMORA Members | $10 General Admission | $5 Student Admission
- Doors open at 6:00 PM, Event begins at 6:30 PM
- Event takes place in the Main Gallery, with all museum galleries open for viewing prior to the program.
- Tea and sweets will be available for your enjoyment.
- Audience Q&A will follow the presentations.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Dr. Konstanze Runge has served as the lead curator of the Icon Museum in Frankfurt/Main since 2019. She holds a background in Religious Studies, Ethnology (with a focus on East and North Africa), and Semitic Studies. Prior to this, she taught Religious Studies at Philipps University Marburg and curated the Religionskundliche Sammlung, a museum dedicated to the diversity of world religions, until 2018. Konstanze has field experience in Morocco, Ethiopia, and Russia, and her research centers on the role of religious objects in museums.
In her dissertation Religion in Museums: Religious Objects Between Disenchantment and Enchantment in Leningrad and Marburg (2022), she explores museum practices at two of the world’s oldest religious museums during the 1930s. Her study offers a reconstructive analysis of exhibitions at these Soviet and German institutions, drawing on a wealth of archival materials, including museum documents, journals, and photographs.
Born in New Zealand, Dr. Wendy Salmond received her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin and now teaches art history at Chapman University in Orange, CA. Her publications on Russian art include Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial Russia; Treasures into Tractors: The Selling of Russia’s Cultural Heritage, 1918-1938; Tradition in Transition: Russian Icons in the Age of the Romanovs, and most recently,”Eternity in Low Earth Orbit: Icons on the International Space Station.” Her current project is a book on the reception of icons in the United States.
Details
- Date:
- Monday, January 6
- Time:
-
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
- Cost:
- Free – $10
Venue
- TMORA
-
5500 Stevens Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55419 United States