Conference ‘Common Dutch and Russian Cultural Heritage’

The in nearly 300 year grown tradition to buy Dutch and Flemish masters to decorate the estates of the nobility has been torn down after the Russian Revolution in 1917, but is still very much alive in the many estates that have been turned into museums. The interiors are part of our common cultural heritage. The preservation and conservation of the cultural goods that have been collected over the years, poses several questions to the curators in the Russian county.

In collaboration with the Foundation for Renaissance of Russian Estate, SCI organises the conference ‘Common Dutch and Russian Cultural Heritage’ from the 12th – 14th of March 2012. The conference will be held on the 230 hectares of the estate Kuskovo, which has been built in the 18th century by count Boris Petrovich Sheremetyev. The estate has been constructed to suit the taste of the tsars and was originally a summer retreat for parties and such. 

Besides the vast gardens and follies, the church and bell tower, a kitchen building and an Italian house, there is also the Dutch house, which has been tiled completely with tiles from Delft dating back to the 18th century. The applied waterworks and locks, which were used to reenact battles at sea, were preserved well. In 1918 the estate was nationalised and the Kuskovo Estate Museum came into being. 

The conference ‘Common Dutch and Russian cultural heritage’ will be held in the Glass house of the Kuskovo Estate Museum. This impressive stone building houses the State Museum of Ceramics, which holds a collection of 18.000 objects from foreign and Russian porcelainfactories, among which the socalled Soviet propagandaporcelain from the 1920’s.

During the conference, the main subjects will be restoration techniques of Dutch and Flemish Masters and the preservation and conservation of the collections. Dutch and Russian specialists have been invited to contribute their knowledge on restoration, attributions and digitizing the rich Russian collections housed in former palaces and estates.

The Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, Mr. A. Avdeev and the Dutch ambassador in Moscow, H.E. R. Keller, will open the conference.

Contributions from the Dutch participants will be by:

Em. Prof. Dr. Anne van Grevenstein, on the restoration of paintings on panel,

Drs. Eric Domela Nieuwenhuis, on the attributions of Dutch and Flemish paintings and the preservation of collections,

Drs. Bernard Vermet, on the research and attributions on the internet (presentation with hand-out in Russian),

Floris Guntenaar, on digitizing collections and the affiliation with international databases (presentation with hand-out in Russian),

Lia Gorter, Foundation for Cultural Inventory (SCI), on the importance of international collaboration and the sharing of knowledge for museums.

Financial support:
Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency 
Dutch Embassy, Moscow