Archival data on Historical locations of the Asiatic Museum in the Kunstkamera building

Abstract

The Asiatic Museum was the first specialized research centre for oriental studies in Imperial Russia. The successors of the Asiatic Museum are nowadays the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg). The Asiatic Museum collection of coins was subsequently transferred to the State Hermitage and the collections of ethnographic artefacts were embedded into the collections of what is nowadays Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg). Studying the history of the Asiatic Museum is therefore significant both for the history of oriental studies and the history of museums and special collections in Russia. The archival holdingds reveal that in the 1820s the Asiatic Museum collections were allocated in the west wing of the present Kunstkamera building and occupied only five rooms in the first floor. In the 1830s some of the Russian museums were reformed. The Asiatic Museum had to change its location: it occupied a hall in the first floor in the Kunstkamera. Later, in 1837, the items, which belonged to the ethnographic collection were transferred to the newly established Ethnographic Museum of the Academy of Sciences. Now they form an integral part of the collections of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera).