By Vasily Khmelevsky
Ten Centuries of Art in Belarus exhibition, held in the National Art Museum from March, was visited by about 24,000 people
At the formal closing of the exposition, the Director General of the museum, Vladimir Prokoptsov, shared some details about the exhibition.
14,000 visitors bought tickets for the exhibition with another 10 thousand getting acquainted with it during the Night of Museums event. From the first day of work, the museum held 320 excursions; several hundred records have been left in the visitors’ book. Exhibition workers created paper and electronic catalogues and audio guides in Russian, Belarusian and English. They also put into operation a special mobile version of the website using a system of QR codes which allowed visitors to learn more about a work of art via their mobile device. During the exposition, visitors could visit four lectures devoted to the theme ‘Artistic associations of Belarus’.
According to Vladimir Prokoptsov, the carrying out of the Ten Centuries of Art of Belarus exposition became areal master class for the museum. “It is the symbolic project not only of the year, but also of the decade which gave us the chance to return to our roots,” he noted. They also intend to introduce the exposition at the Second National Museum Forum in Gomel in September of this year. The project will not only be shown in Belarus.Museum workers in China and Poland want to see the exhibition in their countries too.
All interested visitors were able to get acquainted with the best works of national art until July, 10th. For the first time, in one exhibition space, about 500 objects from the times of Byzantine Empire to the present time from 29 museums of the republic, corporate funds and private collections were represented.
Exposition gathers about 500 objects dating from the Byzantine Empire to the modern day
The gems of the exposition were the works of world-famous artists, whose creativity had not been exhibited in Belarus before, including Eve by Chaim Soutine, which was bought at auction Sotheby’s in New York for $1,860,000. For the first time, visitors could look at the book of Symeon of Polotsk — Rod of Ruling — from 1667, pictures of Marc Chagall created during the blossoming of creativity of the great artist, and also the work of Walenty Wańkowicz — Portrait of Poet Tomasz Zan.
The exhibition was organised by Belgazprombank JSC jointly with Gazprom Transgaz Belarus JSC, the Culture Ministry and the National Art Museum of Belarus.
