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The establishment of Soviet artists' unions in remote parts of the country has not been fully studied, but it is of interest for understanding the processes of formation of national fine art. One of the most important documents for the Soviet cultural space of the 1930s was the resolution of April 23, 1932, of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks "On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations". Its impact is of a prolonged nature: artistic associations, originally created in the form of regulated unions, still exist, already having the status of entities exempt from direct government control. The main object of this research is the organization that united the masters of fine arts of a vast territory — the East Siberian Regional Union of Soviet Artists. The source base of the research is archival documents that make it possible to reconstruct the process of uniting provincial artists into a single regular organization and to assess the decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks from the point of view of the development of the cultural space of the East Siberian Territory. Despite the regulatory actions common to the creation of such institutions, the process of organizing the association of Soviet artists in the peripheral parts of the country had a number of features that formed the final assessment of the outcome of the above-mentioned resolution. The article demonstrates that the geographic remoteness from the capital, the separation from the cultural centers, the harsh climatic conditions, the small population on a large territory, and technical communication difficulties had predetermined the specificity of the processes of Siberian social design, and the need for certain decisive actions and support from the authorities to create a viable association of fine art masters.

The article deals with the features of mythopoetic models in S.T. Konenkov's sculpture. Despite the fact that monographs, albums, dozens of articles are devoted to the maestro's works and they are quite well studied, the nature of the mythologism of S.T. Konenkov's artistic thinking has not been fully revealed. In the ideological context of Soviet art studies, which were based on the methodology of the "social history of art", only the fact of the sculptor's deep interest in archaic folk traditions was noted, while this topic can be considered as a natural manifestation of the myth-making process characteristic of the art of the 20th century as a whole. Using the example of S.T. Konenkov's works, the article attempts to retrace the formation specifics of the "non-classical artistic language" of mythopoetics in the Russian land, which consisted in the fact that, unlike Western European artists who would immerse in the exotic world of archaic art of non-European origin (primarily Africa), Russian masters were fascinated by their home antiquity. When considering the mythological structures that served as the basis for the mythopoetic models of S.T. Konenkov's sculptural projects, three basic groups can be conditionally distinguished: a direct appeal to ancient mythology, pagan Slavic reminiscences, and a mythological interpretation of a freshly created new world. It is thanks to myth-making that the characters of S.T. Konenkov's sculptural compositions, despite all the heterogeneity of specific subjects, belong to the integrity of a single cosmos created by the mythopoetic consciousness of the maestro. At the same time, the common mythological foundations of the Russian sculpture development in that period determine the commonality of the mythopoetic models, characteristic not only of S.T. Konenkov's works. In many ways, they are also quite clearly manifested in the works of S.D. Erzia, A.S. Golubkina, and others.

The article endeavors to reconstruct and present a collection of children's books published during the Great Patriotic War, stored in the Rare Books Department (Book Museum) of the Russian State Library. The term "collection" in this case is conditional, since children's books of that period were not acquired specifically and are not stored as a separate independent collection. They belong to the three collections — Illustrated Children's Books, Serial Publications, and A.K. Tarasenkov's Collection. Such storage of books of the same subject in different collections has its own specifics.The conducted research considered books published strictly in 1941—1945. Both edge years — 1941 and 1945 — are presented in full, since the war, its premonition, beginning, end, and the features of life in the post-war months, had left their mark on the themes and design of both pre-war and post-war books.On the occasion of the 70th and 75th anniversary of the Victory, in May 2015 and June 2020, the Book Museum of the Russian State Library held two mini-exhibitions dedicated to children's books of the Great Patriotic War period. The exhibitions introduced visitors to the publications of 1941—1945, as well as to literary works that had been published in the post-war period but written during the war, hot on the traces of the heroic events. Still, the books presented at the mini-exhibitions do not exhaust the entire volume of publications of that period stored in the Book Museum.The Rare Books Department has identified 204 items that can be combined in a thematic collection called "Children's Books of the Great Patriotic War Period". Due to some peculiarities inherent in this collection, we cannot draw any conclusions about the repertoire of children's books of the war period in general, but we can picture the repertoire, geography and circulation in relation to fiction for children.

This article examines online educational products developed by museums both independently and in cooperation with educational institutions. The analysis revealed a pool of museum online products, including mass open online courses (MOOCs), specialized professional online courses (SPOCs), educational games, mobile apps, and podcasts. The authors identify advantages and features of each type of the museum online products (MOPs) and determine the prospects for their inclusion in the educational process.The study aims to reveal the activity of different kinds of museums and museum communities in the development and implementation of educational online products both in their own educational activities, carried out by an increasing number of museums, and in the process of formal and non-formal education in cooperation with universities, schools, and further education institutions that implement it. The study discovered that museums develop both MOOCs that are traditional for the system of higher professional education, and educational online products, such as educational games, podcasts, and mobile applications with educational content, that are not widely used at present, but are promising for formal and, especially, non-formal education. An important result of the study was the conclusion about the common practice of cooperation between museums and universities in the joint development of online products, as well as about the feasibility of deploying such work with institutions of secondary general and vocational education.The authors' analysis of the system of museum educational online products allowed us to conclude that new players — museums — have appeared in the online education market in the role of organizations that create and use various online resources in their activities, including those that can be used in the field of education.

The article deals with a little-known mo- nument of Seljuk woodcarving — a door from an ancient Friday mosque (Jami-i Kebir) in Kayseri (Turkey). The carved door, exhibited now in the Ankara Museum of Ethnography, has not yet been the subject of a comprehensive publication. Therefore, this artifact belongs to the group of Anatolian Seljuk woodcarvings, made in the 12th — early 13th centuries, that have a special significance. As rare monuments of Islamic art of the pre-Mongol Middle East, they stood at the origins of the blooming of Anatolian Seljuk art that would occur some decades later.The door was ordered and installed during the Jami-i Kebir mosque renovation, carried out in the second reign of the Seljuk Sultan Giyseddin I Kayhosrov (1205—1211), on the instructions of one of his emirs — Muzaffar al-din Mahmud son of Yagy-Basan, a descendant of the Danishmendid dynasty. The article considers the door's ornamental decoration, organized as a classic "mihrab" composition, in a set of technical and stylistic aspects. For a comparative analysis, the author inspects a wide range of woodcarvings of the 11th—13th centuries from Anatolia and Iran. The close resemblance of used techniques and decoration, as well as motifs, ornamental themes and epigraphy makes it possible to suggest that the cabinet maker Ibrahim son of Abu-Bakr al-Rumi, who left his signature on the Minbar of the Alaaddin Mosque in Ankara Fortress, could be the author of the magnificent carved door from Kayseri' Jami-i Kebir.

The article considers the emergence and development features of the symbolic and emblematic system of children's portraits in the 18th century. Children's portraits, as well as the history of childhood in general, attract more and more attention of Russian and Western researchers; the largest museums of the country and the world devote their exhibition projects to this subject. This paper shows, for the first time, how symbols have been "reinterpreted" in accordance with the changes in the attitude of Russian society to the nature of childhood and in the artistic environment at that time, the "formulas" of its presentation in art. The article considers in detail the specifics of using a number of attributes by Russian artists in the context of children's portrait images: books, floral symbols, animals and birds, toys and other items. As examples, there are considered the works of "capital" and "provincial" artists of the 18th century: I.Ya. Vishnyakov, F.S. Rokotov, D.G. Levitsky, V.L. Borovikovsky, as well as a number of authors whose names remain unknown. Special attention is paid to the issue of borrowing symbols, signs and metaphors from Western European art, their adaptation and transformation in Russian painting, taking into account national ideas about children and their subject environment. The article concludes that the children's portrait symbolic sphere went through a difficult path during the 18th century, from a tool for personifying the male or female adulthood of a young model to creating the image of a child as a romantic symbol of the world of childhood, an elusive ideal.

The article is devoted to the history of Antwerp printed books, which, in the first half of the 17th century, underwent a profound transformation caused by the influence of the Baroque style emerging in the Netherlands, with its characteristic contrast, dynamism and intensity of images, and combination of reality and illusion. The author demonstrates the Baroque book development by the example of the sources that she first introduces into scientific circulation: books stored in the Research Department of Rare Books (Book Museum) of the Russian State Library (RSL). The article gives examples of the formation of a new allegorical thinking of the Baroque, in which allegory became the norm of artistic vocabulary. The new allegorical imagery is noted in the title pages and illustrations of books that characterize the printing of that period. The Antwerp printer Balthazar Moretus (1574—1641) was an excellent master of this new Baroque book. By using leading artists to design his books, he took an important step in the development of book design. There are well known publications by B. Moretus featuring beautiful title pages designed by his friend Peter Paul Rubens (1577—1640). The typical appearance of text sheets is also the result of the use of elegant fonts, rich design and abundance of decorative elements. The article analyzes the influence of Rubens on the Baroque book formation in Antwerp.

The main idea of the article is to address the phenomenon of dancing as a type of creative activity in the modus of self-identification. Sociocultural (self-)identification within the framework of art is taken as the process and space of forming an outline — personal and collective — in relation to certain groups of values, norms and traditions, as a way to discover the boundaries of reflexivity and the possibility of their representation in an artistic act. Basing on the interpretation of reflection as self-directed thinking, this article solves the problem of showing the potential of art in general, and dancing in particular, in the aspect of formation and preservation of identity parameters. The identity is considered as the result of constructing metaphysical supports and methods of self-representation in the widest range: national, religious, ideological, gender, but above all — the actual artistic-stylistic one. In addition to the obvious value of beauty and harmony, the article highlights expressiveness and authenticity as the main axiological guidelines for the art of choreography. The author analyzes the high communicative potential of dancing as a type of artistic activity both at the professional and amateur levels. The article focuses on the specifics of self-identification procedures in the space of modern dance, interpreted in this context in a wide chronological field — from the emergence of "free dance" by Isadora Duncan to current trends in postmodern dance, "contemporary dance" and performative practices. The study concludes that dancing has a high axiological potential as an artistic activity that combines physical and metaphysical practices.

An artist who finds themselves in the last days of a war in the enemy's defeated capital may not just fix its objects dispassionately. Many factors influence the selection and depicturing manner of the objects. One of the factors is satisfaction from the accomplished retribution, awareness of the historical justice triumph. Researchers think such reactions are inevitable. The article offers to consider from this point of view the drawings created by Soviet artists in Berlin in the spring and summer of 1945. Such an analysis of the German capital's visual image is conducted for the first time. It shows that the above reactions were not the only ones. The graphics of the first post-war days no less clearly and consistently express other feelings and intentions of their authors: the desire to accurately document and fix the image of the city and some of its structures in history, the happiness from the silence of peace, and the simple interest in the monuments of European art.The article examines Berlin scenes as evidences of the transition from front-line graphics focused on the visual recording of the war traces to peacetime graphics; from documentary — to artistry; from the worldview of a person at war — to the one of a person who lived to victory. In this approach, it has been important to consider the graphic images of Berlin in unity with the diary and memoir texts belonging to both artists and ordinary soldiers who participated in the storming of Berlin. The combination of verbal and visual sources helps to present the German capital's image that existed in the public consciousness, as well as the specificity of its representation by means of visual art.

This article investigates the development of the 20th century ballet genre on the example of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881—1945). The study aims to reveal the features of B. Bartók's ballets in the context of trends in Western European art of the 20th century and to show the composer's innovative techniques. The article identifies specific musical formative means that reflect the genre definition of "pantomime", and emphasizes his innovation. The early 20th century ballet art is an extremely bright phenomenon associated with the active search for new ways of developing the genre, which took place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Classical ballet, which had reached its peak in the works of the Russian ballet school and the works of M. Petipa, was suddenly recognized as outdated and unviable. The new generation of choreographers sought to refute, to a certain extent, the genre's old laws. The idea of searching for new means of expression became the leading one, and the canon of classical choreography was replaced by pantomime and a new unusual dance technique, which later became known as modern dance. B. Bartók's ballets "The Wooden Prince" (1917) and "The Miraculous Mandarin" (1919) are examples of the new type of ballet performance of the early 20th century. The article shows that the composer focused on creating a symphonic score corresponding to the ideas of pantomime. His appeal to this had been primarily dictated by the librettos themselves, in which B. Balázs and M. Lengyel had defined the work character in this way. Naturally, the rejection of classical ballet's traditional forms influenced the works' compositional features. The article demonstrates that the scores of "The Wooden Prince" and "The Miraculous Mandarin" are distinguished by a new approach to the musical structure, in which the principles of instrumental forms play a significant role. At the same time, each of the ballets expresses the dialectical pair of "canon and heuristic" in its own way: "The Wooden Prince" retains to a certain extent the flair of classical ballet; in "The Miraculous Mandarin", this genre pattern is violated almost ostentatiously. In this work, B. Bartók's appeal to such an anti-classical subject reflects the era's new trends associated with the artistic movement of expressionism. In the Hungarian composer's ballets, the dualism of the traditional and the innovative gives rise to a different type of ballet score itself.

For the first time in Russian, the article reconstructs the history of the free school of drawing founded by the French artist and talented teacher J.-J. Bachelier (1724—1806); analyzes the charter and rules of this institution, its educational programs and practical activities; determines the role in the development of artistic craft in France. The article's subject matter is multidisciplinary and is located at the intersection of the theory and history of art, art education and pedagogy. In view of the small number of comprehensive studies on the history of art education in France, this study expands the notion of it on the example of this educational institution. The school was opened in Paris at the initiative of J.-J. Bachelier for boys from the craftsmen environment. Although many different schools had been founded throughout France, the educational institution of Bachelier had special conditions of origin and a fortunate destiny — later it became part of the National School of Decorative Arts. From 1750, Bachelier became head of the Painting Department of the Vincennes (later Sevres) Porcelain Manufactory. According to his notes, his first concern was to make specialists. That is why he decided to organize a school where children were accepted from the age of eight and spent six years receiving the highest quality secondary art education of that time. Until now, Russian scientific literature has not paid enough attention to the history of French educational institutions in the field of art, despite the fact that France used to serve as a model for the whole of Europe in this regard. This article partially fills this gap, as well as provides a brief overview of other (less successful, but no less interesting) projects of J. Bachelier, for example, an art school for girls, the brilliant idea of which was never realized.

The technological revolution of recent decades has already brought art to the broadest masses, and the unexpected intervention of the pandemic has significantly accelerated the process of migration of theatrical art to the virtual space, causing the corresponding dynamics of the audience. What is the theater audience in the era of digitalization and the spread of alternative forms of cultural consumption? How does the theater build its relationship with the audience today? In search of answers, we conducted a series of sociological surveys of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater's audience — both at the theater's performances and in the online community of its fans. The purpose of this phase of the study was to answer the fundamental questions: do spectators surveyed in the theater and those surveyed online represent the same audience; what are their main differences; and what are the drivers of their spectator behavior? The article presents the main results of a comparative analysis of two images of the Moscow Art Theatre's audience based on a number of content parameters by two types of surveys, as well as the results of a regression analysis of the theater attendance. The study resulted in definition of the qualitative and behavioral differences between the theater visitors and the viewers surveyed online, and identification of the factors of theater attendance for both of the represented audience groups. The study made it possible to clarify the role of age and other socio-demographic parameters in cultural activity, as well as the influence of preferred forms of cultural consumption (live contacts or online views) on one's attitude to art, motivation and spectator behavior. The conclusions of the study, despite the uniqueness of the object, reflect the general patterns of the modern art audience's dynamics.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich (the august poet K. R.) were linked by many years of friendship and creative cooperation. After the composer's death (October 25, 1893), K. R. became involved in the process of perpetuating his memory. The posthumous dialogue was manifested in various forms: Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich's participation in church and secular memorial ceremonies, private commemorations, and his close communication with M.I. Tchaikovsky and V.L. Davydov — the composer's brother and nephew. In addition, K. R. reexamined his creative and epistolary communication with the composer, whose memory he would pass on to his children. These and other aspects are considered in three sections of the proposed article: 1) "Under the Sign of the Liturgy Op. 41" (this spiritual and musical work runs through the whole life of the Grand Duke); 2) "The Grand Duke and M.I. Tchaikovsky" (a key figure in the "human" aspect); 3) "K. R. Reads 'The Life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky'" (one of the most important findings was a copy of the book 'The Life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky', which belonged to Grand Duke and bears his notes; they retrospectively reflect the process of in-depth family reading). The article is based on documentary materials from Russian and foreign collections (including the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Library of Congress, USA), many of which are introduced into scientific use for the first time. The article uses methods of comparative source studies. The materials of the article can be used in a course of the history of Russian music, as well as in a modern commented edition of the epistolary heritage and diaries of P.I. Tchaikovsky, M.I. Tchaikovsky and Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich.

Envisioned by its founders as a storehouse of historical evidence — material artifacts, written and oral testimonies, photographs and films — the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC is the repository of a significant archive of music salvaged from the Nazi ghettos and camps. This paper focuses on the Museum's single largest music collection, that of the Polish camp survivor Aleksander Kulisiewicz (1918—1982). A native of Kraków, Poland, who spent over five years as a political prisoner in Sachsenhausen, Kulisiewicz in later life grew obsessed with documenting the repertoire that his fellow Poles and an international cadre of musicians, authors, and artistes created and performed while captives of the Germans. The collection he amassed during his final decades consists of hundreds of songs, choral works and instrumental pieces gathered from survivor memoirs, manuscripts, and multiple recorded interviews with former inmates. Approximately 70,000 pages of documentation encompass music-related artworks, biographical details of camp poets and composers, and copious additional corroborating material. Apart from providing an overview of the collection, the paper will discuss Kulisiewicz's cultural and intellectual background in interwar Poland, and postwar career as a performer, activist and author. Music illustrations will be drawn from Kulisiewicz's archive of sound recordings, including selections from his own series of autobiographical songs written in Sachsenhausen. A final set of musical examples demonstrates the collection's utility as a resource for musicians and programmers seeking overlooked, yet revivable repertoire, and for composers inspired to create new works based on "rescued" music preserved in the Museum's archive.