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British Museum to showcase 40 pieces of St. Petersburg’s Kunstkamera

The exhibition is focused on climate change in the Arctic and how this process affects the region’s population

LONDON, October 15. /TASS/. More than 40 pieces of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) will be showcased at the British Museum’s exhibition dedicated to the Arctic and its people, senior keeper of the Kunstkamera’s Siberia fund Vladimir Kisel told TASS Wednesday.

"The Kunstkamera is represented at the exhibition by more than 40 pieces, which is around a quarter of the total number. The exhibition is focused on climate change in the Arctic and how this process affects the region’s population. We brought unique things, the finds from Ust-Polui sanctuary in Salekhard. This is the so-called Ust-Polui archeological culture which dates back to III century BC - III-IV century AD. There are also objects of the Beringomor culture of the Proto-Eskimos of approximately the same period, primarily bone carving," Kisel underlined. Apart from that, the exhibition will show artefacts from Yakutia of XIX-XX centuries such as female silver jewelry as well as shaman costumes and tambourines.

"The other objects were taken from the collections of the museums in Cambridge and Oxford as well as from the collection of the British Museum in London itself. The exhibition was in the works for a couple of years," the Kunstkamera representative underlined, saying that political differences between Russia and the United Kingdom did not affect the event organization.

The Arctic: culture and climate exhibition will open its doors in the British Museum on October 22 and will last until February 21. Hartwig Fischer, Director of the museum, said that the event "is a bold and ambitious exhibition that reflects the expanding vision of the British Museum. The show directly addresses the essential question of how humans can live with the impacts of extreme weather. The future and past come together in the present, united by the shared experiences of Arctic peoples." The exhibition was initially planned to open in May but had to be rescheduled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography is one of the oldest and largest ethnographical museums in the world, its collections have 1.2 million objects. It is the successor of the first Russian state public museum, the famous Kunstkamera founded by Peter the Great in 1714.