Oleg Kushnirskiy’s Collection Was Presented in the Holy Land

The catalog of Oleg Kushnirskiy’s collection was officially presented at the Moshe Kastel Museum of Art in Maale Adumim, Israel. Director of Russian Icon Collection, Ilya Kushnirskiy, met there with the Museum’s team and one of the book’s authors—Dr. Alek Epstein, an Israeli cultural critic and museum curator.

Alek Epstein wrote a detailed article for the catalog, based on numerous interviews with Oleg Kushnirskiy. He described the collector’s creative biography, from the origins of his interest in Russian icons and his first collection formed in the 1980s in Leningrad to the current collection, which was assembled entirely in the United States where Oleg Kushnirskiy emigrated with his family in the early 1990s.

Ilya Kushnirsky and Dr. Alek D. Epstein at the presentation of the catalog.

“I am deeply grateful to you for what you have done for my father as a biographer by researching his life’s journey as a collector,” Ilya Kushnirskiy told Dr. Epstein at a meeting at the Museum. “It is a great pleasure to come to Israel with this book, to see you personally, and to present the catalog of Russian icons in the land where Christianity originated. It means a lot to me and my family.”

Dr. Alek Epstein pointed out that Oleg Kushnirskiy’s collection is one of the most important collections of Russian icons and Russian art overall in the West. “It is especially important today when, unfortunately, there is no cultural exchange between Russia and the West,” he said. “In these unhappy days of the new Cold War, your father’s collection is of great importance not only as a collection of artworks but also as a means of intercultural dialog, above all between Russia and the United States.”

Oleg Kushnirskiy’s biographer also credited Ilya Kushnirskiy’s efforts to promote the collection—a series of successful catalog presentations at Russian museums and an upcoming exhibition of the collection at the Museum of Russian Art (TMORA) in the USA.

After the museum presentation, Ilya Kushnirskiy visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem where he consecrated the book’s copy. This event became a special milestone in the life of the collection—it symbolically connects the icons, their creators, and the present and future connoisseurs and keepers of this art with its spiritual and physical origins. Thus, the consecrated catalog becomes an integral part of the collection and its history.

Ilya Kushnirskiy inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

During his visit to the Museum, Ilya Kushnirskiy also donated two graphic works by Moshe Kastel, one of the most important 20th-century Israeli artists, to the institution. The images of Jerusalem in the lithographs signed by the author, which were added to the Museum’s collection, also became a symbolic link between the Kushnirskiy family and the Holy Land.