"Our museum is sustained almost entirely by the enthusiasm of its employees," says Marinitza Babanazarova, the director of the museum. "They are dedicated to art."
Their dedication is the legacy of the museum's founder, the talented Muscovite painter and dedicated art collector Igor Savitsky, with whom they worked until his death in 1984. In the mid-1950's, Savitsky made his home in the capital of Karakalpak an autonomous region in Uzbekistan, far from the center of Soviet authority where he could hang the unsanctioned avant-garde art that clashed with the socialist realism style that was instituted by Stalin in the 1930's. He amassed his impressive collection during his travels of the Soviet Union even through his last days of debilitating illness.
At the time, Savitsky was one of the few people to understand the value of this work, work that was in danger of being lost permanently. He rescued the art and quietly exhibited it in his remote museum. Only with the advent of "Perestroika" did the museum advertise the presence of these non-conformist works, which hung alongside a collection of officially sanctioned paintings. Thus the Nukus museum became the keeper of an entirely different and unknown story of Soviet art.
Savitsky had always dreamed of people traveling to Nukus to see the museum, recalls Babanazarova. Today, his dream has finally come true. The 1998 publication of a New York Times article about the little-known museum brought a chartered flight of art collectors and historians directly from New York to Nukus. And since then, the museum has continued to attract tourists, as well as the attention of the mass media, to the otherwise ignored town most commonly associated with the Aral Sea Crisis.
Borne out of this still-vibrant and infectious enthusiasm for the museum is the creation of an international NGO called "The Friends of the Nukus Museum." The NGO, formed by local and international enthusiasts, has as its primary goal to assist the museum in preserving and exhibiting the collection, says Barry Lane, acting chair of the organization and the UNESCO representative in Uzbekistan.
According to Lane, the museum, which also houses collections of archeological and anthropological material that document the culture and folklore of Karakalpakstan, is of great cultural importance to the region and is essential to reinforcing Karakalpak identity and pride.
"It is no secret that many people would like to have such a collection," Babanazarova says, referring to the offers and pressures to sell the collection or even to relocate it elsewhere. To keep the collection in Nukus, the NGO hopes to raise funds to finish the construction of a new space. Building was begun in the town's central square in the 1970's, but there is not enough money in the strapped town budget to finish it any time soon. Currently, the collection is primarily displayed in a nondescript two-story building that serves as the town gallery; another nearby building contains the ethnographic collections and storage for the many pieces that cannot be accommodated in the limited gallery space.
An unsuspecting passerby would never guess that the building houses one of the world's greatest, though practically unknown, collections of Soviet art from the 20's and 30's a collection that is considered by critics to be second only to the famous Russian collection in St. Petersburg. Uninteresting from ther outside, the building is actually less than suitable for displaying art: the light is poor, the halls small, and almost every inch of wall space is covered with closely-hung paintings. In addition, the climate controls are inadequate for paintings. Hence, the dedicated staff must rise early in the summer, trying their best to control the climate. For this reason, the NGO is raising money to buy air conditioners and humidifiers to provide more appropriate conditions.
Ultimately, the NGO hopes to exploit this community resource to create educational and tourist programs that will help the depressed and impoverished region that hosts it, according to Lane.
In honor of the opening of the new NGO, on May 10 The Hotel Intercontinental in Tashkent held an exhibition entitled "Rarely Seen Treasures from the Nukus Museum." It featured works from the collection, many of which have never been seen outside of Nukus, including "Uzbek School" artists A. Volkov, M. Kourzine, N. Karakhan, V. Ufimtsev and U. Tansykbaev.
Though there have been several offers to relocate the collection from Nukus to a major cultural center, which would give the world greater access to the collection, Babanzarova expresses strong feelings that Nukus should always host the collection. "It was the soil of Karakalpakstan that recognized this collection," she said. The land became a second motherland to artists who enjoyed no official sanction in their time. Even until his last days, Savitsky was committed to the Karakalpak land. Though he died in Moscow, he was buried in Nukus, according to his final wishes.
Josh Machleder is the country director
for Internews in Uzbekistan.
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