The permanent historical exposition of the New Jerusalem Museum is located in the building, which was built according to the project of the City-Arch bureau in 2013. Sergei Choban and Agniya Sterligova opened it in December 2017. It is not the first time that they work together on exhibition projects - just remember the Museum of Rural Labor in Nikola-Lenivets, Roma Aeterna and Manifestation in the Tretyakov Gallery and others.
The 17th and 20th centuries were chosen as the most dramatic. During the Second World War, the monastery held a defensive position and was blown up by the invaders. The 17th century is the most important, of course, because of Patriarch Nikon, whose long-suffering and suffering personality is at the center of the exhibition. Nikon's fate is still full of untied knots. The church schism he provoked is a hot piece of history that has not been completed in modern times. Was Nikon right when he started a reform, bringing Russian and Greek liturgical books into line? What was the purpose of the patriarch? Theological? Political? Why anathematize those who disobeyed because of nonsense, because two fingers or three fingers are not so important from the point of view of the Gospel? Who to read the Old Believers who burned in the fire - martyrs for the faith or heretics? Nikon was tried, defrocked as a patriarch, and even expelled from the priesthood when he fell into disgrace, and many years later he was forgiven and allowed to return to the New Jerusalem monastery he founded. He died on the way, but healings took place near his relics. Shakespearean figure! What he wanted is not clear. What is the true motivation - power or truth? Unclear. The New Jerusalem Monastery is as quaint as its founder. In the name New Jerusalem (Nikon also got it for it), one feels a craving for the universal and symbolic, the architecture of the main temple tries to repeat the temple of the Holy Sepulcher. There is an impulse here: we build Heaven on earth.
The New Jerusalem Museum Complex, which recently appeared next to the monastery, is also an unusual structure, huge in area, alien in architecture. The building seems to be dug into the landscape, but the feeling that it, like the Mayan pyramids, is turned into space. This is a hill with a "crater", the bottom of which is the central square. Probably not without a dialogue with the funnel of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. It turned out to be the opposite temple. The monastery temple is directed to the heavens, and here the movement from the hill into the depths of the earth and the cutting of layers. The space inside the museum is very large and complex. A collection of paintings from Rokotov to Isaac Brodsky is hung in its halls, and various exhibitions are held. ***
The museum moved from the monastery to a new building in 2013, and part of the permanent exhibition from its funds - the halls of Russian art of the 17th-19th centuries and church art - have been open for a long time. On a large area of the new building - 28,000 m2, exhibitions, conferences, and a lecture hall are also held. Having received a new building, the museum is working quite actively. But the exposition "New Jerusalem - a monument of history and culture of the 17th – 20th centuries", dedicated to the history of the monastery, remained in the monastery refectory longer than others. It occupies only 5% of the total area - 1500 m2, but in the sense of the main. So she got a key place, in the center of the lower tier, under the site of the museum courtyard, at the symbolic "root" of the museum building. It is also not surprising that a separate competition was held for it, which was won by Sergey Tchoban and Agniya Sterligova, who then implemented the project in a record time, in four months.
The core and beginning of the exhibition is a multimedia installation in an amphitheater with a completely black floor and walls designed to emphasize the central role of this space. However, the wide screen with a short video on the history of the monastery attracts attention immediately. In front of him is a white model of the monastery ensemble, animated by color video-mapping, synchronized with the video on the screen: certain fragments are highlighted with colored spots on the model, a fascinating and informative show. On the sides there are luminous explanatory schemes, and for those who want to clarify something on the balcony in front of the screen, there is an impressive touchscreen.
The contrasting multimedia core is surrounded by wide niches separated by two-meter-deep partitions. Showcases with the main exhibits covering the history of the monastery are located here: personal belongings of Nikon, objects from the sacristy of New Jerusalem and the Valdai Iversky Monastery - Nikon's second most important megaproject. As well as icons, original tiles, books and paintings.
The niches, which the authors call portals, have become a response to the need to fragment and structure the vast and integral space of the hall. “In a large hall it is difficult to maintain the required temperature and humidity regime, to create competent lighting,” says Sergei Tchoban. - It is impossible to exhibit anything in the center and at the same time there are few walls for hanging exhibits. It is difficult to combine video installation, mapping and artifacts in one large space. Niches set a chamber scale and made it possible to focus the attention of visitors on exhibits, mostly not too large.
“It was required to place about 450 artifacts, different in character and volume,” says the founder of Planet 9 Agniya Sterligova. - We measured all things, thought out the stands, the frequency of changing the exposition. Considering that ninety percent of museum visitor complaints are usually about labels, we carefully planned the information boards at the bottom of the windows. As a result, it is convenient to change exhibits and labels without the use of special equipment. Many schoolchildren come here, so it was important to create entertaining exhibits like a hologram of Nikon's carriage, thanks to which children will pay attention to more serious things."
The corners of the "portals" are rounded, the walls are of a rich cherry color. “In color solutions, we go from the collection. The modern trend is colored walls for painting. Intense colors highlight both painting and graphics, except for modern painting, which is good on white,”says Sergei Tchoban.
Unlike the classic museum color - rather terracotta, as in the Russian Museum or Vienna Kunsthistorisches, the local color is a little brighter and colder, it approaches the purple jacquard walls of the Pitti palazzo and - it is possible that - hints at the ambitions of the patriarch, who owns the famous formula " priesthood above kingdom”, as well as the scenario of the repentance of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich at the grave of Metropolitan Philip for the sins of Ivan the Terrible. In other words, the niches around the central installation form a kind of “patriarch's crown”. In addition, the purple color echoes the color of the walls of the "bowl of the courtyard" of the museum building of Valery Lukomsky, which also serves to develop the spatial and semantic plot.
The exhibits are snatched out by spots of light, around them it is twilight, allowing you to focus on specific things, giving rest to the peripheral vision of visitors; at the top, the darkness thickens, visually increasing the space. at the junction of the walls and floor there is a strip of bright white illumination - a kind of guiding thread that helps to confidently navigate in space.
The second and third parts of the exhibition, dedicated to the 17th and 20th centuries, respectively, are located in arched enfilades around the center. “We got a large arched space with inclined walls, not very convenient for placing exhibits,” says Sergei Tchoban.“Therefore, we divided the space into separate rooms, proposing the concept of an“eternal museum”with an enfilade - this is how the Baroque palaces of Rastrelli were built. So the exposition starts from the central nucleus, from where, without returning, you can continue the movement along the circular suite."
At first, the museum's management was wary of the idea of allocating separate rooms, worried about visibility and safety. Therefore, the architects calculated the layout so that the caretaker, who sits in one room, could see the next caretaker - thus minimizing the number of employees. “Large spaces are needed for large paintings, and there are many small exhibits here, people want to come closer. - says Agniya Sterligova. - There will be no influx of visitors here, therefore, intimacy in communication with exhibits, the human scale is extremely important. We had at our disposal a huge "donut" with a distance of 7 meters from wall to wall. Now there are portals 2 meters deep plus a passage. And the space has become commensurate with the exhibits”. And for those who do not have enough to look at icons, books, paintings and utensils at close range, or for those who are used to sliding their fingers across the screen, touchscreens with more detailed information are installed.
The resulting space is saturated with both data and emotions, which is correct, since it is assigned the role of that symbolic "spring" that should saturate museum exhibitions with energy sufficient to study such a vivid and at the same time very complex phenomenon of the history of the late Russian Middle Ages as New Jerusalem of Patriarch Nikon. The monastery is undoubtedly a masterpiece, a fantastically interesting and unique monument. But ancient Russian history and art are not easy topics that require a specific angle of view and interest. For people who initially did not have such training, a spectacular impulse is required. Perhaps the new exposition is tightly twisted enough to create it. After all, it will keep the interest of visitors to other expositions of the museum, spreading around both speculative and real "circles".
