Memorable dates of Russia: The exhibition to the 170th anniversary of the birth of Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay

June 2, 2016 at the Headquarters of the Russian Geographical Society in St. Petersburg was opened an exhibition dedicated to the 170th anniversary of the birth of Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay.

The exhibition shows unique exhibits from the Scientific RGS archive associated with ethnographic and anthropological studies of N. N. Miklouho-Maclay of peoples of Southeast Asia, Australia, New Guinea, Oceania. Visitors will be able to see the diaries and notebooks traveling scholar, manuscript maps, drawings natives, their buildings, objects of culture and life, flora and fauna, photographs from travels and personal archive researcher. The exhibition is provided with items of the XIX-XX centuries from the vaults of the Russian Geographical Society, representing the culture of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia.

Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay (1846-1888) - an outstanding Russian ethnographer and anthropologist. The researcher of the indigenous population of South-East Asia, New Guinea, Australia and Oceania. Member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society (1871). During the life of N. N. Miklouho-Maclay were published more than 100 papers on various aspects of anthropology, ethnography, zoology, comparative anatomy, geography and other sciences. 

The exhibition consists of several sections, corresponding to the different periods of the life of a scientist. The first section presents documents, photographs, lecture notes with drawings in the years of study N. N. Miklouho-Maclay in Jena University (Germany), the materials of the first travel to the Canary Islands and the Red Sea, Pacific travel plan, submitted to the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in 1869. A significant part of the exhibition is devoted to New Guinea and nearby islands of Oceania (1871-1883), is the only extant diary, drawings, notebooks, correspondence, photographs, and objects of the scientist with the Maclay Coast. Separately is presented Malacca diary of the scientist, as well as materials related to the presence of N. N. Miklouho-Maclay in Australia, family photos and documents about perpetuating his memory.