The head of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, Mikhail Shvydkoi, the Russian president's special representative to the North Western federal district, Ilya Klebanov, and the governor of St. Petersburg, Valentina Mkatviyenko, will participate in the opening ceremony.
The exposition will be the first stage of the formation of the Jewish museum dedicated to the history and culture of Russia's Jews, the spokesman for the Russian Ethnography Museum, Inna Karpushina, told RIA Novosti.
"Leading Russian, European and American historians and ethnographers will be involved in the museum's formation. It will open in 2005-2006," she noted.
The exhibit will feature the Jewish collection of the Russian Ethnography Museum, including pieces from its special depositories.
Ritual utensils, festive and ceremonial costumes, household goods, amulets, photographs, Torah ornaments, etc. that belonged to Eastern European Jews, Caucasian Jews and so-called Eastern Diasporas will be shown at the exhibit.
The exhibit will show 600 of 2,500 Jewish pieces that the museum possesses. Ansky (the pseudonym of Shlom Zanvil Rappoport), the first researcher of Jewish culture, started the museum's collection. Ansky led a series of ethnographic expeditions in the 1910s. His collection was exhibited in the Museum of Jewish Civilization that was open in St. Petersburg in 1916.
In 1929, the Jewish Civilization Museum closed and its pieces were sent to different Soviet museums, mainly the Ethnography Museum. In 1939, the Ethnography Museum organized its first Jewish culture exhibit. The exhibit, "Images of One Nation: The Jewish Collections of the Russian Ethnography Museum" is being held under the aegis of the Russian Culture Ministry and financed by the federal budget.
