Moscow Spotlights Russia's Sacred Roots in Religious Art Show

RUETERS
By Nastassia Astrasheuskaya

Visitor explores religious artworks on display

RUSSIA - Russia opened an unprecedented exhibit of religious art pulled from across the country and abroad at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery on Thursday, in a show of Kremlin support for an Orthodox Church growing more powerful since the fall of Communism. The state-sponsored exhibit “Holy Rus” displays art works from the Old Eastern Slavonic state, which existed in the middle ages and united the lands of modern Belarus, Ukraine and the European part of Russia, with its capital in Kiev. Russia inaugurated a new holiday last year to mark its adoption of Christianity in 988 by the leader of the Kievan Rus Prince Vladimir more than 1,000 years ago. “It isn’t the political state called Russia, whose history we are telling here, it’s the historic period of ‘Rus’ we are showing,” Orthodox church representative Father Nikolai Kim said. [link]