Video-story Arseniev's Documents in the Russian Museum of Ethnography Archive

The Russian Ethnographic Museum’s Archive is the same age as the museum itself. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the archive has kept correspondence with the first collectors of the museum, inventories of the first collections, manuscripts of scientific papers and entire funds of ethnographers. The most valuable part of the fund of the researcher of the Far East, Vladimir Arseniev (1872-1930), is his autographs, correspondence, collecting cards. The manuscripts are distinguished by Arseniev's special authorial style, giving out a vivid artistic temperament in him. Arseniev’s collecting cards attract attention as an example of the aesthetics of a 20th-centurty document. The cards contain sketches, information about the place of collection, and legends. While reading archival documents, we start a kind of dialogue with Vladimir Arseniev himself.