When a document becomes an exhibit: an analysis of the exhibition “ ‘Nostalgia for world culture...’: The Osip Mandelshtam library”

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of the exhibition, which is not only an attempt to reconstruct Osip Mandelstam’s library by the description of his widow Nadezhda Yakovlevna, but also is a visualization of the many years researches by curators of the exhibition in the Mandelstam studies and the history of Russian culture. To wide extend, the exhibition is about the eternal theme of “the poet and the book”. But in this project, unexpected facets appeared, in seemingly well-known facts from the life and work of Mandelstam. This is due to the surprisingly accurate synthesis of archival and museum exhibition practices, research excitement and the aspiration of the exhibition creators to be honest in the face of history. The exhibition is arranged in chronological order, but its complex structure – with a lot of story beats and new meanings – requires parsing after the implementation of the project. During its preparation and realization, the author of the article acted as an exhibition manager, therefore this text is also an attempt at self-analysis.