September Issue 2000
Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, NC, Features Exhibit on Russian Presence on North American Continent
The story of Russian America, a 126 year period of exploration and colonialism on the North American continent, is presented in the exhibition Unseen Treasures: Imperial Russia and the New World at Charlotte, NC's Mint Museum of Art, Sept. 9 through Dec. 31.
Wedding Crowns, Early 19th Century
Over 300 historic artifacts and works of art from the Russia State Historical Museum and the State Archive of the Russian Federation will be featured. Objects range from etchings of native Aleuts of the Island of Unalaska to the splendid costumes and jewelry worn at the Imperial Court of St. Petersburg. Original letters from Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy help present the historical context of the period. The personal belongings of Russian emperors, gem-set icons of the Orthodox Church, sailing paraphernalia used by explorers, colonial equipment and products, costumes, portraits and paintings tell stories of the Imperial and the everyday.
Alexander
Fedorovna, Franz Krueger, 1830
Among exhibition highlights is the red lace and satin court dress, trimmed in swan down, worn in 1860 by Princess Dagmar of Denmark (later to become the Empress Maria Feodorovna). Most striking is the elaborately carved Masquerade Sleigh, resembling an ancient triumphal chariot decorated with a sculpture of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and war, used by Catherine the Great at a masked pageant for her coronation ceremony in 1763.
Catherine
the Great, L.L.I. Khristenek
Unseen Treasures is organized by the American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Russian American Company. The exhibition's Southeast appearance is sponsored by Wachovia and Wachovia Companies Offitbank and Barry, Evans, Josephs & Snipes, Inc.
The story of Russian America begins with a conversation in London in 1698 between Peter I and William Penn who urged the Russian Tsar to send an expedition east of Siberia to discover whether the Russian and American continents were connected. Building a navy to enable such a venture would wait another 23 years. With the signing of the Treaty of Nystad with Sweden in 1721, Russia acquired passage to the Baltic Sea and entry to the world's oceans. Russian naval enterprise began in earnest.
Peter I commissioned the Danish mariner Vitus Bering seven years later to find an answer to William Penn's question and to explore expanding his empire eastward. Under severe hardships the Bering Strait was discovered and chartered, but the ships St. Paul and St. Peter failed to land in North America, hampered by continuous fog and the coming winter. On its second attempt, Bering's "Kamachatka" expedition sighted the spectacular peak of Mt. St. Elias and landed on the American coast on July 15, 1741, well after Peter the Great's death.
A 1760 portrait of a fur-draped Princess A. A. Volkonsky in the exhibition serves as a reminder of the major attraction of the New World. Bering's sailing crew returned to the Siberian port of Petropavlovsk with sea otter pelts, soon judged to be the finest fur in the world. The sea otter became highly prized in China, opening exchanges for tea, silk, porcelain and other goods.
Game Markers,Eye Glasses / Catherine II
Russian colonization of America was led by private trading companies, with the Russian-American Company eventually gaining exclusive trading rights. The majority of early colonists came from the working classes, in particular, the state serfs of northern Russian and Siberia, renown for their hunting, fishing and woodworking skills. As the colonies expanded, greater self-sufficiency skills were required. Most of the hunting and fur trade fell to the local Eskimos, Coniagmuites and Aleuts while Russians maintained the trading fleet, managed enterprises and defended the colonies.
The first settlement was in Three Saints Bay in 1784 near present day Kodiak, serving as the capital until the Russian American Company moved its headquarters to richer sea otter grounds in Sitka in 1806. The governing administration by merchant companies were characterized by greed and cruelty. Alexander Baranov, the first governor, aggressively expanded Russian territory. His severe treatment of natives led to a massacre in 1802.
The Russian navy was placed in authority in 1818, immediately changing the appalling treatment of natives. Sitka, or New Archangel, became known as the "Paris of the Pacific," the largest cosmopolitan settlement in the North Pacific. It was port of call for traders who also visited Europe, Asia, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and the American west coast.
Palace Square Parade, St. Petersburg
The strength of Unseen Treasures: Imperial Russia and the New World is the ability of the paintings and objects to resurrect stories of hardships, heroism and incredible faith. There is even a Romeo and Juliet saga in the story of Rezanov and Conchita.
Count Nikolai Rezanov's pluck, guile and determination saved colonial Sitka from starvation and certain extinction in gaining entry and trade with the forbidden and hostile Spanish port of San Francisco. Once more, Rezanov won the heart of the beautiful Concepcion, the 16 year-old daughter of Commandante Don Jose Arguello. But the marriage would need approval of both the Tsar and the Pope. Attempting to report to the Tsar, Rezanov crossed Siberia in winter. Fever and exhaustion caused a fatal fall from his horse. A grieving Conchita entered the Dominican Sisterhood. Her reaction upon learning the circumstances of her lover's death is immortalized in a poem by Bret Harte, revealed in a dramatic revelation at a speaker's banquet 40 years later.
Perhaps the most remarkable story of all is that of the Russian Orthodox priest, Father John Veniaminov who learned the Aleut language, translated the Gospel and converted the entire Aleut people. Father John was a Renaissance man, skilled as a carpenter, watchmaker, inventor, linguist, naturalist and was a noted ethnographer, sociologist, missionary and scholar whose published work for the Academy of Sciences brought him to the attention of the Emperor. The Tsar appointed him Bishop, and eventually Metropolitan (pope) of Moscow and all Russia. His introduction of the Orthodox faith remains his legacy in America today. Father John was canonized a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977.
Letters on display between Alexander II and Abraham Lincoln signify the peaceful end to Russian America. The near depletion of the sea otter and heavy losses sustained in the Crimean War, led Alexander II to sell New World territory to Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward. The debate and vote in Congress to provide purchase funds was bitterly divisive, earning the transaction the derisive nickname "Seward's Folly." The formal transference took place at Sitka in 1867. It proved in time, at two cents an acre, to be the greatest land purchase in American history.
Special admission for this exhibition will be: $10 for adults; $7 for seniors & students; $6 for Mint members; $2.50 for children 6-11 and free for children 6 years and under.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings or call the Museum at 704/337-2000. You can also
check them out on the web at (http://www.mintmuseum.org).
Mailing Address: Carolina Arts, P.O. Drawer
427, Bonneau, SC 29431
Telephone, Answering Machine and FAX: 843/825-3408
E-Mail: carolinart@aol.com
Subscriptions are available for $18 a year.
Carolina Arts
is published monthly by Shoestring
Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc.
Copyright© 2000 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston
Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts
from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts
Online, Copyright© 2000 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved
by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use
without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina
Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.