.png){kind=logo}
|
Contact information • History • Access & Facilities • Bibliography
ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: E-57Last update of repository: 15 March 2020Rossiiskii institut istorii iskusstv (RIII)Previous names
The predecessor of the present Institute was first established in 1912 on the basis of the book collections of Count V.P. Zubov (the library was established in 1910) as the first Russian Institute of the History of Art. In early 1913, a publicly accessible course on the history of art was started in the Institute, which in 1916 gained the status of a higher education institution. During the postrevolutionary period, the Institute was reorganized many times. In 1920 it was renamed the Russian and in 1924 the State Institute of the History of Art (GIII). In 1931 it was combined with the State Academy of Art Studies (GAIS), which was located in Moscow, and was reorganized as the Leningrad Division (LOGAIS), but in 1933 GAIS was moved to Leningrad and combined with the Leningrad Division. In 1936 the divisions for the history of literature and fine arts were separated out, and GAIS was renamed the State Scientific Research Institute of Art Studies (GNIIS). In 1937 the Institute temporarily lost its independence and became part of the Leningrad Conservatory, and in that same year the State Scientific Research Institute of Music (GMNII) was established, which in 1939 was reorganized to form the State Scientific Research Institute of Theater and Music (GNIITiM). In 1962 the Institute was again abolished and became the Scientific Research Division of the Leningrad N.K. Cherkasov State Institute of Theater, Music, and Cinematography (LGITMiK, now the St. Petersburg State Academy of Theater Art—SPbGATI), with important archival holdings, as well as one of the most valuable exhibits of music instruments in the world. Among the predecessors of LGITMiK itself was the school of actors and masters founded in 1918, which from 1948 through 1962 was known as the A.N. Ostrovskii Leningrad Theater Institute (Leningradskii teatral'nyi institut im. A.N. Ostrovskogo). In 1990 the Scientific Research Division of LGITMiK was reorganized as the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Art Studies (VNIII), which thereby acquired the archival collections as well as the collections of musical instruments from various institutions. In 1992 it reverted to its historical name as the Russian Institute for the History of Art. The music manuscript collections themselves have a complicated history, quite separate from the present Institute and LGITMiK itself. An exhibition of musical instruments was founded in 1902 under the Court Orchestra (Pridvornyi orkestr), which also brought together considerable manuscript and photographic materials, on the basis of the collections of Ts. Snuk, N.I. Privalov, and Rabindranath Tagore, among others. In 1918 it was reorganized as the State Museum of Music, and in 1921 came under the administration of the Leningrad Philharmonic as the Music History Museum (Muzykal'no-istoricheskii muzei) and acquired the holdings of the former memorial museums for M.I. Glinka and A.G. Rubinstein (Rubinshtein) and the Museum of Musical Instruments under the Conservatory. At various times the museum was enriched by a number of private collections, including the music-related holdings of the Sheremetev Historical-Life Museum (Sheremetevskii istoriko-bytovoi muzei), the Court Orchestra (Pridvornyi orkestr), the Museum of the City, and the State Music Fond. In 1932 the museum was transferred to the Hermitage as the Sector of Musical Culture and Technology. In 1940 the collections in that sector were transferred to the State Scientific Research Institute of Theater and Music (GNIITiM), and manuscript holdings were deposited in the Historiographical Cabinet (Istoriograficheskii kabinet) of GNIITiM. The collection of musical instruments was also transferred to GNIITiM as the basis of the new Museum of Musical Instruments; a permanent exhibition under the Institute was opened in 1956. After several subsequent administrative transfers, since 1994, the Museum of Musical Instruments functions as a Branch of the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theater and Musical Arts. The present Cabinet of Manuscripts, now part of the Sector of Source Study (Sektor istochnikovedeniia) of RIII, with its rich manuscript collections, predominantly relating to music, was earlier organized as the Historiographical Cabinet of GNIITiM, and then the Cabinet of Archival Fonds under LGITMiK. The holdings have consolidated documentary materials from a number of earlier private collections which had been acquired by the various previous structural divisions of RIII and museums of music and musical instruments, and were brought together in the Historiographical Cabinet of LGITMiK. The Cabinet of Manuscripts itself was established in 1938, on the basis of artistic and biographical materials of M.I. Glinka, A.G. Rubinstein (Rubinshtein), and A.P. Borodin, transferred from the Music History Museum of the Leningrad Philarmonic and the State Scientific Research Institute of Music. In 1940 it received from the Hermitage the music library of Empress Elizabeth (Elizaveta) Alekseevna (wife of Alexander I), and also fragments of the music libraries of a number of high court families, including the Sheremetev, Golitsyn, and Miatlev families, music scores from the Court Capella (Pridvornaia pevcheskaia kapella), along with several of the other collections mentioned above. During the war the Cabinet acquired the personal collection of the director of the Mariinskii Theater, E.F. Napravnik. Following the Second World War, the Institute received a significant quantity of “trophy” or displaced music materials that were brought back to Russia from Germany and Eastern Europe. In May 1991, 2,200 manuscript music materials that had been held by the Institute since 1948 were returned to Hamburg University Library, including scores by Johann Sebastian Bach, Christoph Gluck, Franz Joseph Haydn, and Alessandro Scarlatti. In 1944 a separate Rimskii-Korsakov Museum and Archive (Muzei-arkhiv N.A. i A.N. Rimskikh-Korsakovykh) was established under LGITMiK, when the Institute received the archive of Rimskii-Korsakov, but later its manuscript holdings were all combined with those of the Historiographical Cabinet under the Scientific Research Division of the Institute, except for some Rimskii-Korsakov manuscript materials that were transferred to the Rimskii-Korsakov Memorial Museum in Tikhvin, outside of Leningrad. In the late 1950s and 1960s the Cabinet of Manuscripts received many holdings from well-known Soviet theater personalities, critics, actors, and directors. Its holdings of pictorial materials were significantly expanded in 1964, when it acquired the collection on the history of Russian ballet in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from the Leningrad collector V.S. Gil'. A Cabinet for the History of the Cinema was established in 1958, and has been collecting archival and reference-bibliographic materials on the history of domestic and foreign motion pictures. N.B. The archival records of LGITMiK and the various predecessor research divisions and museums that were absorbed by the Institute (including GNIITiM) with documentation from the years 1912 through 1970 have been transferred to TsGALI SPb (D–18, fonds 82 and 352). |
