This month's museum pick...

A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum

The Vision of a 19^th Century Moscow Merchant Saves Immense Parts of Russia’s Theater Legacy

Russia’s long and bitter winters early on produced a culture steeped in storytelling and theater. As Moscow rose to pre-eminence in the Russian Empire, its budding merchant class, especially in the 19^th century, began to support a lively theater scene that took its inspiration from such playwright geniuses as Pushkin, Chekov, Gogol and Turgenev.

The museum’s exhibition of theater memorabilia from the 1920s.

Fortunately, one of the merchant class’s sons, Alexei Alexandrovich Bakhrushin (1865-1929) began collecting theater memorabilia, eventually amassing tens of thousands of items, including costumes, sketches, set designs, portraits of various playwrights, dancers, actors, performance photographs and media relating to the theater. In 1894, Bakhrushin formed the Theatre Museum to display his collection, housing it at his estate on the outskirts of Moscow.

By 1913, Bakhrushin deeded the museum to the city of Moscow, which, in turn, offered the museum’s immense patrimony to form the core of the Literary Theatre Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. After the Bolshevik coup, the city authorities, now able to expropriate any property they wished without paying for it, began whittling at Bakhrushin’s estate, seizing parts to give to various other organizations and reducing it to the rather small remainder that houses the museum today. The museum became the A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, a name it retains to this day.

Today, the museum boasts more than 1.5 million items, though most of them are stored rather than on display because of space limitations. Among the museum’s highlights are Bakhrushin’s study room, a survey of the cultural sources of Russian theater, a view of Russian theater on the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, an exhibit of avant-garde theater mementos, the room of the great opera and theater singer Fedor Ivanovich Shalyapin (1873-1938), and an exhibition hall.

The museum also exhibits its collections in six other sites around Moscow.

— Patrick Totty