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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: H-272

Last update of repository: 18 March 2020

Rossiiskii etnograficheskii muzei (REM)


Previous names
1948–1991   Gosudarstvennyi muzei etnografii narodov SSSR (GMEN SSSR)
[State Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR]
1934–1948   Gosudarstvennyi etnograficheskii muzei (GEM)
[State Ethnographic Museum]
1917–1934   Russkii muzei—Etnograficheskii otdel (EO RM)
[Russian Museum—Ethnographic Division]
1901–1917   Russkii muzei Imperatora Aleksandra III—Etnograficheskii otdel (EO RM)
[Emperor Alexander III Russian Museum—Ethnographic Division]
History
The museum, founded in 1901 as the Ethnographic Division (Etnograficheskii otdel) of the Russian Museum, and opened to the public in 1923, ranks as one of the richest ethnographic museums in the world. It is housed in the building that was specially constructed for the Ethnographic Division in 1900–1911 by the architect V.F. Svin'in. In 1934 the division was reorganized as a separate museum and named the State Ethnographic Museum (GEM). In 1948 it acquired the collections of the State Museum of the Peoples of the USSR (Gosudarstvennyi muzei narodov SSSR) in Moscow, which had been closed down during the Second World War. The latter had formerly been the Central Museum of Ethnology (Tsentral'nyi muzei narodovedeniia), which had originally been founded in 1924 from the collections of the Ethnographic Division of the Rumiantsev Museum, among others. After the merger, the museum was renamed the State Ethnographic Museum of the Peoples of the USSR. In December 1991 it was added to the federal register of the most valuable monuments of the cultural heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation. In 1992 the museum was renamed the Russian Ethnographic Museum (Rossiiskii etnograficheskii muzei), but, to be sure, it holds extensive collections relating to the culture, ethnography, and contemporary folk art of ethnic groups throughout the former USSR.


ABB ArcheoBiblioBase Archeo Biblio Base Patricia Kennedy Grimsted