The Old Russian Style and the Arts of Nostalgia

An online lecture by Dr. Wendy Salmond

In the closing decades of the Russian Empire nostalgia for an imagined national past consumed Russia’s educated classes. Armed with scholarly publications and original artifacts, architects and designers developed an indispensable vocabulary of onion domes and boyars, manuscript illuminations and kokoshniki with which to conjure “Old Russia” for modern people.

Join art historian Wendy Salmond as she explores the making and meanings of the “Old Russian Style” through a virtual tour of the Russian History Museum’s rich holdings, from luxury albums and costly icons to souvenir spoons and children’s books. The talk will conclude with examples from contemporary architecture and design showing that nostalgia for a bygone Russia has not lost its power to inspire in the post-Soviet era.

About the Speaker

Born in New Zealand, Wendy Salmond received her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin and now teaches art history at Chapman University in Orange, CA. Her publications on Russian art include Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial Russia, Treasures into Tractors: The Selling of Russia’s Cultural Heritage, 1918-1938, Tradition in Transition: Russian Icons in the Age of the Romanovs, and most recently, “Eternity in Low Earth Orbit: Icons on the International Space Station.” She is currently editor of the Journal of Icon Studies, published by the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton MA.

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Connecting With Zoom

This virtual lecture is presented live via Zoom. Registered users will be emailed a link to join this Zoom program. To get started, please download Zoom on your chosen device and explore the Frequently Asked Questions.

This program will be recorded.