Experts Discuss the Collection and Exhibition of Russian Icons at TMORA
Talks by leading experts on Orthodox icons were held as part of the exhibition Masterpieces of Sacred Art from the Oleg Kushnirskiy Collection at The Museum of Russian Art (TMORA) in Minneapolis, USA. The event featured lectures by Dr. Konstanze Runge, lead curator of the Icon Museum in Frankfurt am Main, and Dr. Wendy Salmond, professor at Chapman University and a prominent specialist in Russian icons, and a co-author of the Kushnirskiy collection catalog.
The evening also included remarks by Ilya Kushnirskiy, Director of the Collection and son of collector Oleg Kushnirskiy, as well as TMORA’s Executive Director, Mark Meister. The program and the audience Q&A session were moderated by the museum’s curator, Dr. Masha Zavialova.
Dr. Konstanze Runge’s talk, Icons in Museums: Collecting and Exhibiting Orthodox Christian Art in Frankfurt, focused on the history and importance of collecting and displaying icons in Germany. She used the Icon Museum in Frankfurt am Main as an example to discuss how the collection was formed and why icons fascinated German collectors in the second half of the 20th century. She also shared insights into modern exhibition practices and the challenges and opportunities of showcasing Orthodox Christian art in Frankfurt’s multicultural environment.
Dr. Runge also addressed some key topics, such as how to preserve and interpret religious artifacts today and the steps museums can take to protect and promote Orthodox art collections in the future.
Dr. Wendy Salmond’s lecture, Russian Icons through American Eyes: A Forgotten History, explored the period between the 1917 Russian Revolution and the end of World War II, when Russian icons became highly sought after in the United States. During this time, art collectors acquired icons from Soviet Russia, museums featured them in traveling exhibitions, and galleries promoted them as Imperial relics. Dr. Salmond revisited this chapter of American interest in Russian icons and reflected on how it compares to contemporary visitors’ experiences at TMORA’s Masterpieces of Sacred Art from the Oleg Kushnirskiy Collection.
About the Speakers
Dr. Konstanze Runge, serving as the lead curator of the Icon Museum in Frankfurt/Main since 2019, is an expert in Religious Studies, Ethnology, and Semitic Studies. Her research focuses on the role of sacred objects within museum contexts, informed by fieldwork in Morocco, Ethiopia, and Russia. Her 2022 dissertation, Religion in Museums: Religious Objects Between Disenchantment and Enchantment in Leningrad and Marburg, explores the practices of two of the world’s earliest religious museums during the 1930s.
Dr. Wendy Salmond, a distinguished art history professor at Chapman University in California, holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. A recognized authority on Russian art, she has authored notable works such as Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial Russia and Tradition in Transition: Russian Icons in the Age of the Romanovs. Her current research investigates how Russian icons have been perceived and interpreted in the United States