2015 — Year of Literature in Russia: "Here is this House a Century Ago..." exhibition in Tver

"Here is this House a Century Ago... (Kuzmins-Karavaevs and their Ambience. XX Century)" exhibition opening will take place on June 10, 2015, at the Museum of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (Tver).

The exhibition was prepared as part of the Year of Russian literature and is timed to the birth of A. A. Akhmatova.

The exhibition presented two collections that have replenished a collection of the Tver State United Museum in 2014.

One of them consists of 15 early works of the known as “a last artist of the Silver Age" Dmitry Dmitrievich Bushen. Their acquaintance with Akhmatova occurred in the early 1910s. Bushen was a regular habitué of the Stray Dog cabaret and a frequent guest of Kuzmins-Karavaevs at their estate, located next door to Slepnev, where Gumilevs were spending their summers. A few portrait drawings of Anna Akhmatova belong to D. D. Bushen. In 1977, being in exile, Bushen completed the illustrations for "Poem Without a Hero".

The owner of handed to Tver museum collection is Nadezhda Bykova – a child in ward of Alexandra Dmitrievna Bushen, a sister of D. D. Bushen. In the Tver land, in Kuzmins-Karavaevs’ estate Boriskovo, the artist rendered these drawings.

The second collection belongs to the journalist, literary critic, ethnographer, and researcher of the works of Anna Akhmatova, N. S. Gumilev and E. Y. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, Sergey Ivanovich Senin. At the heart of this unique collection are the documents, letters, household items, photographs, and books that were belonging to the famous noble family of Kuzmins-Karavaevs.

The exhibition also presents some pieces from the collections of the Tver State United Museum: the drawings of E. U. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, the memorabilia from the Slepnevo estate of Gumilevs and some items of the late XIX — the first half of XX centuries.