The year 2022 saw the Tsarskoe Selo Museum accomplish old and start new projects and resume some annual events interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is our Top 7 achievements in the past year:
1. Virtual Version of the Amber Room
A uniquely detailed VR project of the Amber Room in 3D became a highlight of our travelling exhibition Peter I: The Amber Way's Beginning and was awarded as Best IT Solution for Culture.
2. Donations by Mikhail Karisalov
The Russian art collector Mikhail Karisalov donated to Tsarskoe Selo 75 rare pieces of imperial porcelain services and 10 artefacts of the 18th-19th centuries, totalling his generous donations of recent years to 222 objects.
3. New Project Started and Old Events Resumed
During June to September the Martial Chamber of Tsarskoe Selo hosted our WWI Stories On Film project, with open-air lectures and movie shows which drew 3,000 spectators and helped increase our WWI Museum's visitor flow by 50 percent compared to pre-pandemic 2019.
The art and fashion show of our Project Associations returned to the Catherine Park after a two-year pandemic hiatus and gathered over 15,000 spectators. The Apple Midday family garden event at the Greenhouses of the Alexander Park returned as well to the pleasure of nearly 1,000 visitors.
4. Three Large Exhibition Projects
The Ruins on Paper exhibition at the Cameron Gallery's ground floor offered a unique chance to see a war-devastated Tsarskoe Selo in watercolours and drawings of 1944 next to authentic fragments salvaged among the ruins of the palaces and pavilions.
The exhibition Officers' Societies of the Russian Imperial Guard at the Martial Chamber showcased nearly 400 objects of the 19th and early 20th centuries from different museum and private collections and also had an amazing catalogue.
Our travelling exhibition project Uniting Russia: From the Tsarskoe Selo Railway to the Great Siberian Way, commemorating the 185th anniversary of Russia's first railway of Tsarskoe Selo and the 130th anniversary of the Trans-Siberian Railway, was launched in Vladivostok in August, then moved to Irkutsk in November. It will continue in Novosibirsk in January and finish in Chelyabinsk in July 2023, following the route of Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovich, later Tsar Nicholas II, on the way back from his East Asia trip in 1891.
5. Museum Publication about Peter I
Tsarskoe Selo: The Footprint of Peter the Great is a book comprising eight research articles by the Museum's employees on how the personality, passions and hobbies of the tsar influenced the imperial residence of Tsarskoe Selo. Besides the earlier mentioned travelling amber exhibition, it is our another tribute to Peter I's 350th birth anniversary in 2022.
6. Restoration Continues
- Private Rooms of Catherine II at the Zubov Wing of the Catherine Palace
- Imperial Farm in the Alexander Park (first stage of work completed)
- Catherine Palace Chapel (painted decor restoration completed)
- Conservation of the Chinese Theatre in the Alexander Park
- Bridges of the Alexander Park (Vittolovo Canal Bridge near the Chapelle completed)
- Objects from our park sculpture collection (Marble Vase in the Maids-of-Honour Garden)
7. Attendance Growth
2.9 million tickets to the Museum were sold in 2022, which is 61 percent higher than in 2021, thanks to pandemic restrictions lifted and domestic tourism increased. Groups and individuals from Russia were the Museum's major visitors, with some individual foreign visitors coming mostly from Iran, India and China.
