Traveling exhibition “The Orchard of Leo Tolstoy”
25 November, 2009 – 10 March, 2010
Mikhail Sholokhov Museum-estate, Veshenskaya
Main themes of this exhibition project are those of Creativity, Family, and Country Estate. It’s just as in one of Tolstoy’s stories: the peasant who planted the tree had died long before, but the tree was still growing. Likewise, the “orchard of Tolstoy” means many things: it’s the real apple-orchards he planted at Yasnaya Polyana, which are still blooming and bearing fruit, and which surround the estate as a gorgeous apple-tree “necklace”; it’s Leo and Sophia Tolstoys’ children, grandchildren, and numerous descendants living today; and, of course, his great works that will live and inspire the readers, calm and torment them, make them laugh or cry as long as people themselves live.
We didn’t want to fully reconstruct details of Tolstoy’s study, or scenes from the life of the family… We wanted to help the visitors come closer to the central figure of our project.
The exhibition can boast of memorial objects from our museum collections, which belonged to Tolstoy and his family, numerous photographs, paintings and drawings. Besides, you will see objects that never belonged to Tolstoy. But they are not just copies; some of them may correlate with the “real” objects, and some may not. But unlike the originals, these are the objects you can touch and even experience: bent-wood furniture one can sit on, or a cup one can drink tea from, and, after all, the very taste of the tea brewed in the way Tolstoy’s wife Sophia did it.
The exhibition can boast of memorial objects from our museum collections, which belonged to Tolstoy and his family, numerous photographs, paintings and drawings. Besides, you will see objects that never belonged to Tolstoy. But they are not just copies; some of them may correlate with the “real” objects, and some may not. But unlike the originals, these are the objects you can touch and even experience: bent-wood furniture one can sit on, or a cup one can drink tea from, and, after all, the very taste of the tea brewed in the way Tolstoy’s wife Sophia did it.
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