Standing in front of Ilya Repin’s painting, it was clear to me why people had fainted during its first unveiling. Seeing the smear of red paint was like I had never seen the color red before. Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan is one of the most famous in the Tretyakov Gallery, and one […]
Deep in Siberia, in a town right on the border of Mongolia, a friend and I decided to visit a closeby church. When we arrived, it appeared we were out of luck – a priest was leaving the grounds, locking up. Actually, our timing couldn’t have been better. I asked if everything was closed, we […]
In Siberia, I always wondered how many visitors a year came to the museums we stopped by. More often than not, the group I traveled with was the only group in a museum, with docents available to give us private tours and their full attention. As I walked the halls listening to experts tell me […]
Most people will tell you that Pushkin without meter and rhyme isn’t really Pushkin. Just about any English translation of his famous poem, the Bronze Horseman, follows the rhyme scheme of the original. However, the tradeoff is that much of the original meaning is lost in translation. I was fascinated by the Bronze Horseman before […]
When it came to choosing a new district of Moscow to explore, I settled on one I knew next to nothing about: Lefortovo. It was the architecture that captured my interest first. I read that several old palaces stood there, including one used by Peter the Great; that it had previously been a district populated […]
I decided to go on a whim. It was something I had passed by before while wandering through Chistye Prudy, thought looked both interesting and unsettling, and then passed by. It’s small enough that you might miss if you’re not looking for it, marked by a small sign on the front window: The Museum […]
When it came to choosing a new district of Moscow to explore, I settled on one I knew next to nothing about: Lefortovo. It was the architecture that captured my interest first. I read that several old palaces stood there, including one used by Peter the Great; that it had previously been a district populated […]
I knew right away when I learned I was traveling to Moscow that I’d want to visit as many museums as possible. I decided to start with one of the biggest, a museum that has displayed collections of European art since the start of the twentieth century. Incidentally, the museum has absolutely nothing to do […]