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From Egyptian mummies to Morozov collection: Pushkin Museum unveils plans for next year

Since September, the collection has been on display in Paris with as many as over 450,000 people having visited it in two months alone

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts Gavriil Grigorov/TASS

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

© Gavriil Grigorov/TASS

MOSCOW, December 13./TASS/. The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts plans to present a large-scale exhibition of ancient Egyptian mummies and the Morozov brothers' collection in 2022, according to a press breakfast on Monday by Marina Loshak, Director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

The exhibition of Egyptian mummies "is a serious, deep metaphysical conversation about the duality of life, the original and a comic, living and nonliving. <…> Within this theme we will show fantastic exhibits most of which have not been shown so far, encompassing over 400 art objects," the director said.

"The exhibition is the result of our teamwork with the Kurhchatov Institute (national research center)," she added. The large-scale exhibition featuring the culture of Ancient Egypt will be on at the Pushkin Museum for the first time in 20 years. Under the current plans, it will be unveiled on February 28. The exhibits on display feature the funeral practices and funeral cults of the Egyptians - mummies, sarcophagi, Fayum mummy portraits and masks, arts of sculpture, monuments of arts and crafts among others.

During the summer, the famous museum plans an exhibition of masterpieces from the collection of Ivan and Mikhail Morozov. Since September, the collection has been on display in Paris with as many as over 450,000 people having visited it in two months alone. "I would like us to speak about the social. Therefore, we will have many various inclusions related to the social rethinking of the role of a major collector and patron of the arts. We will try to speak about people like Morozov who live in our country today," the director stressed.

Marina Loshak also expressed hope that the museum would be able to prepare an exhibition of paintings by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. "It is very difficult to get together Arcimboldo’s works, they are scattered the world over," she said, adding that at any rate the exhibition was in the plans for next year. The museum would like to show at least seven works by Arcimboldo. The other components of the exhibition, already numbering over 100, are already in place.

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