Museum of Russian Icons 2017 Fall Newsletter Volume 6

NEWS from the MUSEUM OF RUSSIAN ICONS Fall 2017 MIGRATION + MEMORY Jewish Artists of the Russian and Soviet Empires from the Vladimir and Vera Torchilin Collection October 12, 2017 - January 28, 2018 M Lev Mezhberg | Still-life with flowers and herring | 1974 | Oil on canvas, laid on board igration + Memory explores the creative responses and historical trajectories of Jewish artists born, trained, or active in the Russian or Soviet empires in the 20th century. Geographic mobility was an essential feature of Jewish life in the region throughout the century. While there were several waves of Jewish immigration to Europe and especially America in the late Imperial era, as well as again in late Soviet times, many also migrated eastward from the Pale of Settlement into the cities of the USSR. The opening of the exhibition coincides closely with the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This Revolution and the one that preceded it in February of the same year transformed the landscape of economic, educational, and professional options for Russian Jewry, including artists, in many positive ways, while also bringing enormous displacement and violence. The exhibition includes nearly 100 artworks by fifty different artists that illuminate the aesthetic contributions and socio-political experiences of Jews within Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, as well as of Russian/Soviet Jews in emigration in Europe and the United States. These paintings, drawings, prints, posters, illustrated books, and decorative art objects, which span the 20th century, carry a complex legacy, of both opportunity and suffering, cooperation and hatred, inclusion and alienation. Organized by Boston’s Ballets Russes Arts Initiative (BRAI), the show draws on a multi-generational private collection belonging to Vladimir and Vera Torchilin, whose family’s path reflects many aspects of the Russian- Jewish experience. The show is curated by BRAI’s Executive Director, Anna Winestein, a Russian-Jewish-American art historian and arts entrepreneur. Visit ballets-russes.com for programs in Boston that are related to this exhibition. Nina Aizenberg | Costume design for a Soviet pioneer youth | c. 1930s | Watercolor on paper Media Sponsor 203 Union Street, Clinton, MA 01510