Art, Nationhood, and Display: Zinaida Volkonskaia and Russia's Quest for a National Museum of Art

Abstract

In 1831, the journal Teleskop published Princess Zinaida Volkonskaia's proposal for a national art museum in Moscow. Volkonskaia's project was progressive to a degree (Russia had no such museum at the time), yet the model she proposed was highly traditional. She excluded Russian art entirely, despite her support of modern Russian artists. Instead, Volkonskaia privileged classical and more recent western European art, underlining the deference to western practice that influenced cultural politics even as Russia moved toward a stronger national sense of self. Volkonskaia's project marks an important juncture in Russia's cultural history: the intersection of aristocratic female patronage and the institutionalization of academic procedure. It also provides a platform from which to consider Russia's self-image vis-à-vis Europe in the aftermath of the Napoleonic campaigns. By tracing an intricate dialogue in which national pride developed alongside continuing admiration for neoclassical ideals, Rosalind P. Blakesley addresses the paradoxes of Volkonskaia's project, and the difficulties of conceptualizing a “national” space of artistic display. Volkonskaia's project poses significant interpretive problems and her exclusion of Russian art prefigures the segregation of Russian and western art in Russian museums today, which has marginalized Russian art even within Russia itself. Volkonskaia's project thus has wide resonance, for the question of whether and how museums encapsulate national cultural identities remains an issue of great intellectual concern.