ST. PETERSBURG, September 25. /TASS/. St. Petersburg will celebrate the 135th anniversary of legendary polar explorer Otto Schmidt. The event, dubbed Garden of Memory of the Arctic Heroes, will take place at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute on September 25. The event's participants will plant shrubs on the institute's territory in honor of the researcher, press service of the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic said.

"In 2026, the museum will organize planting shrubs in the area around the institute in memory of Otto Schmidt (1891 - 1956), an outstanding scientist, polar explorer, leader of many expeditions, head of the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route, and one of the first directors of the All-Union Arctic Institute," the press service said in a release.

Since 2022, the museum has been the initiator of a project under the Green Russia national environmental movement. The event on Friday will open the chain of events devoted to the museum's jubilee - it will turn 90 in 2027.

About Otto Schmidt

Otto Schmidt is a Soviet statesman, geophysicist, Arctic researcher and Hero of the Soviet Union. He led Arctic expeditions on icebreaking steamships the Sedov, the Sibiryakov, and the Chelyuskin in 1929-1934.

About the museum

The idea to have a museum dedicated to studies in the polar latitudes emerged in the late 1920s in the wake of the Arctic's active development. In 1930, the USSR leadership issued an order to establish the All-Union Arctic Institute, which was supposed to have a specialized museum. The museum was due to be in the building of the former St. Nicholas Church of the Same Faith on Marat Street. Leading polar researchers of that time participated actively in the work on the museum's exposition - Otto Schmidt, Rudolf Samoilovich, Yuly Shokalsky, Vladimir Wiese, and others.

The museum opened to the public on January 8, 1937, and in the same year it was awarded an Honorary Diploma from the Exposition Universelle in Paris. The museum has responded promptly to events in polar research. For example, back in 1938, they opened an exhibition about the North Pole-1 first drifting station, which presented a tent used by Papanin's team, and the expedition participants' personal belongings. In the 1950s, due to the active Soviet Antarctic expeditions, the collection received new objects. In 1958, the museum received its current name - the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic. In 1998, it gained the status of a Russian State Museum.

Nowadays, the Russian State Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic is the world's largest polar museum with a collection of more than 100,000 objects.