This article was downloaded by: [UQ Library]On: 10 November 2014, At: 10:24Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Slavic & East EuropeanInformation ResourcesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wsee20

Hillwood Museum & GardensKristen Regina aa Hillwood Museum & Gardens , 4155 LinneanAvenue, NW, Washington, DC, 20008, USAPublished online: 20 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Kristen Regina (2002) Hillwood Museum & Gardens, Slavic & EastEuropean Information Resources, 3:1, 35-37, DOI: 10.1300/J167v03n01_04

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Hillwood Museum & Gardens:The Acquisition

of the Avinoff-Shoumatoff Collection

Kristen Regina

ABSTRACT. In 2000 the library of the Hillwood Museum & Gardensacquired the Avinoff-Shoumatoff book collection. The collection, assem-bled by Russian émigré André Avinoff in the 1920s and 1930s, containsrare and significant works on pre-revolutionary Russian religious art, dec-orative arts, archeology, and art history. [Article copies available for a feefrom The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail ad-dress: <getinfo@haworthpressinc.com> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com>© 2002 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. Hillwood Museum & Gardens, library, book, books,André Avinoff, Andrei Avinov, Elizabeth Shoumatoff, ElizavetaShumatova, Avinoff-Shoumatoff collection, religious art, decorativearts, Russia, Russian, Washington DC

In the spring of 2000, Hillwood began the process of acquiring theAvinoff-Shoumatoff book collection. Anne Odom, Hillwood’s Chief Curator,and I went to Bedford, New York to see the collection and learn more about it.With the support of the museum’s director, Frederick Fisher, we became veryexcited by the prospect of acquiring such a fine collection of rare books, whichwas perfectly suited to the library and museum collections. Fortunately, theBoard of Directors was also very enthusiastic, even though the museum was inthe midst of major renovation.

Kristen Regina is Librarian, Hillwood Museum & Gardens, 4155 Linnean Avenue,NW, Washington, DC 20008 USA (E-mail: kregina@hillwoodmuseum.org).

Slavic & East European Information Resources, Vol. 3(1) 2002 2002 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 35

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The Avinoff-Shoumatoff collection had already served as a principle re-source for James Billington’s cultural history of Russia, The Icon and the Axe(New York: Knopf, 1966). Now, Hillwood would have the opportunity tomaintain this fine collection and enhance the library with a collection of widescope and high in quality of art historical scholarship from pre-revolutionaryRussia to equal its art collection. A collection that included important works byseveral generations of archeologists and art historians, from Dmitrii Rovinskiiin the mid-nineteenth century to Igor’ Grabar’ and Nikodim Kondakov in theearly twentieth century.

André Avinoff (1884-1949) originally assembled the collection of ap-proximately three hundred twenty-five volumes in the United States in the1920s and 1930s. Trained in Russia as a lawyer, Avinoff was a Renaissanceman. He was a pianist, an artist, and an art historian. In 1911 he became agentleman-in-waiting to Emperor Nicholas II. He was a lepidopterist; theBolsheviks, unfortunately, seized his collection of over eighty thousand OldWorld butterflies and moths during the Revolution. His Russian library con-sisted of seven thousand entomological works, which he left behind whenforced to flee. Arriving in New York City he painted to help support himselfand received critical acclaim for his works in the early 1920s. His internationalreputation and contacts as an entomologist preceded him, though, and in 1926he was offered the directorship of the newly formed Carnegie Museum inPittsburgh.

A connoisseur of religious icons, Avinoff advised the Pittsburgh residentGeorge Hann on his collection of Russian icons, and even curated an exhibi-tion of these works (Russian Icons and Objects of Ecclesiastical and Decora-tive Arts from the Collection of George R. Hann (Pittsburgh: Carnegie InstitutePress, 1944)). Avinoff’s vast knowledge of the subject is reflected in the manybooks relating to icons and iconography, religion, and the Apocalypse found inthe collection. All of the major nineteenth-century pioneers in the field such asFilimonov, Rovinskii, Golyshev, Kondakov and Likhachev are represented.He collected inventories of the great churches and monasteries such as theKazan’ Cathedral and the Novodevichii Monastery.

As well as providing a historic overview of religious art, Avinoff’s collec-tion includes works on the decorative arts in Russian imperial culture and is animportant complement to Hillwood’s collection of Russian imperial decora-tive art, which is considered to be the most comprehensive outside Russia. In-cluded are copies of Rovinskii’s multi-volume Russkiia narodnyia kartinkiand his six-volume collection of Russian portrait engravings, both in verygood condition, as well as design books by Viktor Butovskii and VladimirStasov. The collection includes catalogs of important pre-revolutionary artcollections (M. P. Botkin, Khanenko).

36 SLAVIC & EAST EUROPEAN INFORMATION RESOURCES

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Many of the books have interesting provenances and dedications. Somebooks are from the royal residences of Pavlovsk and Gatchina. Other examplesinclude a dedication to Nicholas II in honor of the three-hundredth anniversaryof Romanov rule and an 1833 dedication to Aleksandr Nikolaevich, the futuretsar, by Aleksei Olenin, president of the Academy of Art. One title is dedicatedfrom its author to Vladimir Stasov.

Upon Avinoff’s death, the collection was transferred to his sister ElizabethShoumatoff. A Russian-born society portraitist, she painted the portrait ofFranklin D. Roosevelt, which was not completed due to Roosevelt’s death.From Elizabeth Shoumatoff the collection was bequeathed to her son, the lateDr. Nicholas Shoumatoff of Bedford, New York. Hillwood purchased the col-lection from his children: Nicholas, Alexander, and Antonia. For more informa-tion about the Shoumatoff and Avinoff families see Alexander Shoumatoff’shistory Russian Blood: A Family Chronicle (New York: Coward, McCann &Geoghegan, 1982). For more information about Hillwood and the library,please visit our website: <http://www.hillwoodmuseum.org>.

In Our Libraries 37

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