Join us for Opening Night at The Museum of Russian Art as we celebrate two new exhibitions and the start of a new season.

Be among the first to experience The Northern Palette: Winter in Russian Art and Tradition, filling the Main Gallery with 20th-century paintings alongside nesting dolls, lacquer, dolls, and other works of folk and decorative art. Winter landscapes and scenes of skating, sledding, festivals, and snow-covered villages reveal the many ways artists and craftspeople captured the beauty, traditions, and rhythms of life through the long northern winter.

In the Robert J. Brokop Gallery, discover Larisa Grigorieva: Painter of Porcelain, featuring the imaginative hand-painted porcelain of one of the leading artists of Leningrad’s renowned Lomonosov Porcelain Factory. Painted plates, vases, and tea services showcase Grigorieva’s richly decorative style and a remarkable artistic career spanning more than four decades.

Explore the galleries after hours while enjoying live music by Twin Cities Hot Club, seasonal bites and tea, and all-ages artmaking inspired by the exhibitions.

Join us in celebrating two remarkable new exhibitions and a new season of art at TMORA. Guests of all ages are welcome.

TMORA Members: FREE
Children 13 and under: FREE
General Admission: $15
Member tickets are reviewed to confirm membership status.

Saturday, October 10, 2026 | 6:00–8:00 PM
Remarks at 6:30 PM

TMORA Members & Children 13 and under: FREE
General Admission: $15 (no additional online fees)

ABOUT THE EXHIBITIONS

The Northern Palette: Winter in Russian Art and Tradition

Step into a world where winter is not an ordeal, not a season to endure, but one to embrace. Through 20th-century paintings and folk art, this exhibition explores how generations in Russia transformed long winters into seasons of beauty, celebration, and community. Traditional winter attire, winter landscapes, objects of folk art painted with the scenes of skating, sledding, festivals, and snow-covered villages reveal a culture that found color and warmth amid the frozen landscape.

Presented in Minnesota, these works invite us to reflect on our own experience of life in a northern climate. Though on separate continents, our regions share an enduring relationship with winter—one shaped not only by resilience, but also by creativity, beauty, and joy. Discover how generations of artists and craftspeople turned the frozen snow-white landscape into a celebration of life.

The Northern Palette: Winter in Russian Art and Tradition is on view in the Main Gallery October 10, 2026 – January 24, 2027.

Larisa Grigorieva: Painter of Porcelain

The exhibition presents a selection of works painted by Larisa Grigorieva, one of the leading artists of the Lomonosov, now Imperial Porcelain Factory, in the 1940s-80s.  

Founded in 1744 by Empress Elizabeth, the porcelain factory in St. Petersburg is Russia’s oldest and most prestigious porcelain manufacturer. It was known as Lomonosov under Soviet rule, before reverting to its original name, the Imperial Porcelain Factory, in 2005. A pioneer of Russian porcelain production, it is renowned for its hand-painted hard paste porcelain and fine bone china sets, reflecting centuries of imperial elegance and artistic mastery.  

Larisa Ivanovna Grigorieva (1920–1997) was a prominent Soviet porcelain painter who spent over four decades shaping the visual legacy of Leningrad’s famous Lomonosov Porcelain Factory. Joining the factory in 1945 as an apprentice, she quickly developed a rich, imaginative style under the guidance of avant-garde master Nikolai Suetin. While her career spanned from the post-war era into the late 1980s, her work flourished remarkably between the 1960s and 1980s. Renowned for her intricate hand-painted plates, vases, and tea services, Grigorieva masterfully blended elements of mid-century Soviet modernism with vivid decorative imagery, leaving behind over 300 original designs now preserved in elite institutions, such as the Hermitage Museum and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

The Museum of Russian Art thanks the artist’s daughter Olga Starisky for donating porcelain pieces painted by her mother, as well as contributing part of her own collection to this exhibition.  

Larisa Grigorieva: Painter of Porcelain is on view in the Robert J. Brokop Gallery October 10, 2026 – February 7, 2027