Objects of beauty from ‘Mother Russia’ in North Carolina

THE HERALD SUN
By Blue Greenberg

The Durnovo Casket, silver gilt, enamel and sheets of lapis lazuli,
Firm of Ovchinnikov, Russia, 1889, now on view at the N.C. Museum of History.

NORTH CAROLINA---“Mother Russia” conjures up images of great writers; vast expanses of unbelievable cold; royal courts with tsars and tsarinas, the peasants or serfs, who were little more than slaves; the psychic Rasputin; the assassinations of the last tsar and his family; and the people’s devotion to the Eastern Orthodox Church. All this is part of the mystique surrounding this exhibition of more than 200 decorative and religious objects, which date from the first Romanov, Peter the Great (1672-1725), to Nicholas II (1868-1918), the last. [link]

North Carolina Museum of History: “The Tsar’s Cabinet: Two Hundred Years of Russian Decorative Arts under the Romanovs" and "Windows into Heaven: Russian Icons from the Lilly and Francis Robicsek Collection of Religious Art” (Ends March 5);  5 E. Edenton Street, Raleigh, North Carolina; 919-807-7900; ncdcr.gov/ncmoh