 | This image from the invitation to the Yale conference on St. Petersburg shows the skyline of the city, which has been called the "Northern Venice." |
This month, Yale is joining the city of St. Petersburg in celebrating its 300th anniversary and its literary, artistic and musical heritage with a three-day international conference, exhibitions and a concert by the Yale Russian Chorus.
St. Petersburg lies in northwest Russia on the Gulf of Finland at the mouth of the Neva River. Peter the Great began construction of the city in 1703. The city was renamed Petrograd in 1914 and became Leningrad upon the death of the dictator in 1924. Leningrad became St. Petersburg again in 1991.
Today, St. Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia and is hailed as one of the great cities of Europe. A center of culture and education, the city is home to the Hermitage and the Russian Museum, the Winter Palace, the Alexander Nevsky monastery, the Academy of Sciences, and several prominent libraries and universities.
One inspiration for the celebration of St. Petersburg at Yale is the presence at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of a large collection of travel books about Russia, which were assembled and donated to the library by Valerian and Laura K. ("Polly") Lada-Mocarski. The campus celebration is sponsored by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Sterling Memorial Library and the Departments of History and of Slavic Languages and Literatures.
A conference titled "St. Petersburg: 300 Years" will bring scholars from around the world to Yale Thursday-Saturday, Oct. 23-25.
Participants will include speakers from the State Hermitage Museum and the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, from the All-Russian State Library for Foreign Literature in Moscow, the Moscow State University, as well as several European and American universities. Other institutions represented at the symposium will include the State Museum-Park Tsarskoye Selo, and the National Library of Russia.
On Thursday, there will be two sessions in the auditorium of the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St. -- "Visual Arts in the Time of Peter the Great," 10 a.m.-noon, and "St. Petersburg as the Capital of Russia," 2-4:30 p.m.
Friday's program will include a session on "Visual Arts after Peter the Great," 10 a.m.-noon in the auditorium of the Yale Center for British Art and another on "Libraries and Treasures of St. Petersburg," 2-4 p.m. in the Sterling Memorial Library lecture hall, 120 High St. The day will conclude with a keynote address titled "St. Petersburg: The City as Theater" by James Billington, the librarian of Congress.
There will be two sessions on Saturday -- "The St. Petersburg Theme in Russian Literature," 10 a.m.-noon, and "The Flowering of Culture in St. Petersburg," 2-4 p.m. in Rm. 211 of Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High St.
The conference is free and open to the public. A complete conference schedule is available at http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/petersburg/.
In conjunction with the St. Petersburg celebration, there will be exhibitions at the Beinecke Library and the Sterling Memorial Library.
"St. Petersburg: A Portrait of a Great City" at the Beinecke Library will feature books, manuscripts, prints and photographs documenting the role of St. Petersburg as a cultural, artistic and literary center from its founding through World War II. The show, which will be on view through December, was organized by Vincent Giroud, curator of modern books and manuscripts at the Beinecke Library.
While the theme of the exhibition, mirroring the strength of the Beinecke's collections, will be St. Petersburg seen through the eyes of non-Russian travelers, the show will also include noteworthy Russian artifacts, including the library's renowned Romanov albums and a recently acquired manuscript of dissident writer Anna Akhmatova's "Poema bez geroe" (Poem Without a Hero)," describing the Stalinist era.
There will be an opening for the exhibition at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 23, in the Beinecke Library, 121 Wall St. The public is invited.
Beinecke exhibitions are open to the public free of charge Monday-Thursday, 8:30 a.m.-8 p.m., Friday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. and Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
The Sterling Memorial Library exhibition, titled "St. Petersburg: 300 Years," features maps, coins and medals from both its collections and those of the Yale University Art Gallery. (See the story in the Oct. 10 issue of the Yale Bulletin & Calendar.)
There will be an opening for the exhibition -- which was organized by Tatjana Lorkovic, curator of Yale's Slavic and East European Collections, and Fred Musto, curator of the Map Collection -- at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 24, in the Sterling Memorial Library, 120 High St. The public is invited.
The Sterling Memorial Library, located at 120 High St., is open Monday-Thursday, 8:30 a.m.-midnight; Friday' 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; and Sunday, 1 p.m.-midnight.
The weekend celebration will also include a concert featuring current and former members of the Yale Russian Chorus on Saturday, Oct. 25. The performance of sacred and secular music will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Woolsey Hall, corner of Grove and College streets, and is open to the public free of charge.
The Yale Russian Chorus, which is composed of male singers from the University and New Haven communities, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The chorus has sung at Carnegie Hall and the Winter Garden in New York and has toured overseas.
T H I S
Yale celebrates 300th anniversary
of renowned Russian city
International conference
Exhibitions
Concert
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