Oleg Kushnirskiy Collection’s First Exhibition Opens at The Museum of Russian Art, USA

The Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis (USA) opened the first museum exhibition of Oleg Kushnirskiy’s collection – “Masterpieces of Sacred Art from the Oleg Kushnirskiy Collection”. This event of great significance for the collection and its creator is a natural result of more than twenty years of work on its formation and the beginning of a new, public stage of the collection’s development. 

More than a hundred art lovers and representatives of the professional art community – curators, critics, art historians – gathered at the opening of the project.

The collection was presented by Mark J. Meister, Director of The Museum of Russian Art (TMORA), Dr. Maria Zavialova, Curator, Head of Exhibitions and Collections, Oleg Kushnirskiy and his son, Director of the Collection, Ilya Kushnirskiy.

Mark J. Meister, Executive Director & President, TMORA

Today I see the collection on the walls for the first time, for the first time it appears in its entirety to me and to everyone here,” Oleg Kushnirskiy admitted. – All these years the icons have been in storage – and even I, who know each icon to the last detail, today look at the collection with completely different eyes. I am happy and deeply moved. It is a great honor for me to exhibit the collection in one of the best museums in America and to see so many sincerely interested people.

Oleg Kushnirskiy

Maria Zavialova, the curator of the museum and the exhibition, told the audience about the peculiarities of the icons in the collection – miniature painting, characteristic of the icon-painting villages of Mstyora, Kholuy and Palekh, as well as paintings with stamps related to Orthodox holidays and hagiographies of saints.

Ilya Kushnirskiy, Maria Zavialova, Oleg Kushnirskiy

Ilya Kushnirskiy spoke about the great importance of the exhibition at the Museum of Russian Art for the collection: “This is the first museum exhibition of the collection and, in general, the first presentation of it to the general public TMORA is a reputable museum that does a lot of scientific work and holds more than a dozen exhibitions every year,” Ilya said – “We are very pleased that Oleg Kushnirskiy’s collection will be exhibited at this very place for quite a long time, for three months This means that a large number of people will be able to see it I am sure that our project will attract many intellectuals”.

Ilya and Oleg Kushnirskiy

Later, talking about the exhibition opening, Ilya shared his impressions of the evening: “I was amazed by the attention and interest with which people looked at every detail, returned to some icons again and again, studied them from different angles, discussed among themselves and asked questions to Oleg and the curator of the exhibition, Maria Zavialova”. 

The collection will be on display at the museum until January 26. 

In the meantime, we continue to work to ensure that as many people as possible can see Oleg Kushnirskiy’s collection.

On the eve of the Minneapolis exhibition, Ilya Kushnirsky attended the opening of the exhibition “IKONA: Holy Women” at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, where he introduced Oleg Kushnirskiy’s collection to the local art community. We are currently in discussions with a number of museum institutions in America and Europe and hope to share news of new events soon.

Our team of professional curators and art historians is also actively working on a digital exhibition of the collection, with an English-language catalog scheduled for release in January 2025.

Photos by Eli Plunkett