The exposition materials of the future Joseph Brodsky museum in St. Petersburg have been expanded. More than 720 personal items of the Nobel-winning poet have arrived from New York, TASS reports. The items include photographs, posters and cards which will be included in the museum’s collection.
Earlier the Joseph Brodsky Legacy Fund and widow of the poet gave the Anna Akhmatova Museum in St. Petersburg some of Brodsky’s things from his house in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where the poet lived when he taught at Mount Holyoke College. The museum received furniture, posters, a library and a collection of postcards. To date the house on Fontanka ha already accumulated more than 2500 items related to the life of the Nobel Laureate.
Final preparations are underway to turn the St. Petersburg apartment where Joseph Brodsky lived with his parents before leaving the USSR and the country house in Norenskaya village, Arkhangelsk region, where he spent 18 months of his internal exile, into museums. The museums will hopefully open in time for the 75th anniversary of the poet’s birth in May of this year.
“Brodsky’s apartment is fully preserved as it was during his life here,” said Mikhail Milchik, President of the Joseph Brodsky Museum Foundation, in an interview with RIA Novosti. “The kitchen is completely the same – even the old wood stove is there, though nobody uses it.” According to Milchik, the museum will display the poet’s personal belongings, letters and archive photos. The rest of the apartment will contain an exhibition dedicated to Brodsky’s era – the museum will show how the poet and his contemporaries lived in 1970s Leningrad. Poetic readings, thematic exhibitions and movie screenings will also be held in the apartment, which will become a cultural center for Brodsky enthusiasts.
Russkiy Mir Foundation Information Service
