"Family values" Automatic translate

December 26, 2019 at the Museum of Moscow will open the exhibition "Family Values". The exposition covers 150 years of the history of the development of the institution of the family and explores the social forms on which love relationships and married life are built today.

“Family love is the most widespread among people and the most lasting, therefore, in the sense of influencing people’s lives, the most important and most beneficial of all the good feelings of a person,” wrote Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky to his sons Alexander and Mikhail. Today, family and marriage remain an important value for Russian society, despite the opinion that these social institutions are in crisis.

The exhibition will show how the family has changed since the 19th century. How did she go from the traditional patriarchal model to the Soviet one, when the family was considered one of the components of a socialist society. And why the diversity of forms is a hallmark of the modern family, which does not indicate decline, but the natural transformation of human relations.

The project is built on a thematic basis. Each section reflects a certain stage in the formation of the family: a meeting - a wedding - the birth and upbringing of children. The sections are focused on the acute issues of any relationship: what couples of the 21st century inherit from their great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers, why a wedding is not only a union of loving people, but also a bureaucratic process, and how childhood injuries affect our relationships in adulthood.

One of the main topics of the meeting section is meetings and forms of representing oneself through the images of an “ideal woman” and a “real man”.

These concepts will be reflected in the installation, which consists of modern personal care products - nail polishes, creams, gels, perfumes, things of the Soviet and pre-revolutionary era, such as the board game "Flirt of Flowers" of the early 19th century, an invitation card to a ball in the Noble Assembly, box from lipstick of the 1930s, hairpins, beads, powder, shadows, women’s watches of the 1950s.

Through the subject world, documents and photographs of the 19th – 20th centuries, the exhibition will for the first time reflect the history of twelve Moscow dynasties: the merchants Bakhrushins, Syreyshikovs, Varentsovs, Chelnokovs, trainers Durovs, circus performers Nikulins and others. Among the exhibits are: an invitation to the evening in honor of the engagement of Vera Dmitrievna Syreyshchikova and Vasily Stepanovich Maretsky, a letter from Vladimir Fedorovich Lazursky to the future father-in-law about the fact that he is happy to consider his daughter his bride, as well as the diaries of Varvara Alekseevna Khludova (Morozova), where she describes the matchmaking Abram Abramovich Morozov and his unwillingness to marry him.

The dowry has been an integral attribute of marriage since the birth of the traditions of marriage. Objects of two centuries will tell about how the character of the dowry changed and how it influenced the formation of the institution of the family: the 1880s bedspread embroidered in the Novodevichy Convent, chests and chests of the beginning of the 20th century, pastoral porcelain figurines of gentlemen, ladies and romantic couples, objects of Soviet life, which served as gifts for the newlyweds - gramophones, meat grinders, coffee grinders, sewing machines and the Raketa vacuum cleaner of 1963.

An important emphasis in the exposition is placed on memory as a mechanism for constructing continuity. Visitors will see relics passed down from generation to generation: dishes, furniture from the past and the century before last. As well as the personal belongings of the repressed, who were kept by their loved ones - a napkin embroidered by Anna Larina-Bukharina in exile, a skullcap made by Alexandra Kantorovich in the Akmola camp of wives of traitors to the Motherland, documents and photographs of camp prisoners. Items provided by the Gulag History Museum.

Family is a fragile union. Misunderstandings and conflicts are its integral part. The curators of the project suggest reflecting on the traumatic experience through the metaphor of the “skeleton in the closet”. This is the name of the installation in the form of a closed black room, where there are things that keep the memory of injuries and their overcoming. The bride’s wedding dress, whose groom did not attend the ceremony, his father’s military belt, Barbie with hands instead of legs, illustrating the rivalry of the brother and sister. The owner of the doll recalls: “He [brother] unscrewed my hands by Barbie and screwed them to his legs, dismantled them together with friends. <…> I just wanted to be him [brother]. I really wanted to be a boy. I even tried to do some things like a boy. ”

Irina Karpacheva, curator of the exhibition: “Family Values” offer modern Moscow families to connect their personal history with the 150-year history of the capital’s generations. In the way of life of Moscow dynasties of the past, artifacts and letters that we inherited, there are wise answers to many questions of today. The Moscow Museum invites visitors to reflect on what a 21st century family is, adding to the exhibition its own story about love and marriage, parenting or family conflicts. ”