I Am a Message unto You: an Exhibition on the 125th Anniversary of the Birth of Mother Maria (Skobtsova)

The Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House, St. Philaret’s Institute and the Transfiguration Brotherhood, with the support of the Russian Student Christian Movement (France) and the St. Petersburg Committee for Culture, wish to announce the presentation of an exhibition on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the birth of Mother Maria (Skobtsova) (Elizaveta Kuzmina-Karavayeva). The exhibition has been called “I Am a Message unto You”.

The opening ceremony for the exhibition will be held on the 15^th of June, at 5:00pm.

The exhibition will be showing drawings, books, archival materials and pieces of embroidery from the collections of the Anna Akhmatova Museum, the State Russian Museum and private collections in both Russia and France.

SFI lecturers Lidia Kroshkina and Yulia Balakshina came up with the concept for the exhibition. The Akhmatova Museum wishes to express thanks for assistance in making the idea a reality to: Tatiana Viktorova, Kirill, Elizaveta and Peter Sollogub, Elena Klepinina-Arzhakovskaya, Fr. Nikolay Chernokrak, Mother Anastasia, Superior of the Monastery of the Sign in Massif Central (France), Fr. Georgy Kochetkov, Natalia Solomatina, Alexander Burov, Svetlana Chukavina, Olga Filippova, Maria Patrusheva, Vladimir and Maria Lavrenovs, and Vadim Kustov.

Overall exhibition design was provided by the Laika creative agency.

During the course of the exhibition, on 15-16 June, an international conference entitled “We All Stand at a New Threshold: the Creativity in Freedom of Mother Maria (Skobtsova)” will be held at the Anna Akhmatova museum at 53 Liteyny Prospect, (under the arch).

The name of Mother Maria (Skobtsova) (1891-1945) – who was a thinker, poet, artist, and theologian – is associated with the Silver Age of Russian culture, and especially with Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Alexey Tolstoy, 20th century Russian religious philosophy, and the new direction in the Orthodox Church of that time. The sheer scale of Mother Maria’s personality, as she sought answers to the challenges of the ‘disastrous era,’ her Renaissance giftedness, her bright life and martyrdom – none of these fit neatly into either traditional biographies or hagiographical accounts.

The exhibition which will be presented at the Anna Akhmatova Museum does not seek to be a chronological representation of Mother Maria’s life. Rather, through visual images, textual quotes, original items and video footage, the exhibition seeks to recreate Mother Maria’s ‘personal space’ – the space of the ‘new soul’ of the 20th century (Nikolay Berdyayev), who within herself encompasses the Russian Renaissance, revolutionary elements, profound and working faith, creation in freedom and a new type of holiness.

“There are two ways to live: one is to walk – legally and respectably – upon the day land –measuring, weighing one decision against another, and having foresight. But one can also walk upon the water, though for this one must not measure and foresee, but only have faith, at all times. A moment of unbelief starts one sinking.” Mother Maria’s life, service and work might be called ‘walking on water’.

Many of the items which will be on show are being exhibited for the first time, including: graphics from the 1910s from the collections of the State Russian Museum and the Anna Akhmatova Museum, original copies of poems, letters, and unique pieces of embroidery from private collections in France. These include a famous embroidered icon of The Last Supper (for placing over the Royal Doors) which Mother Maria made in Paris in anticipation of the global catastrophe to come.