Portrait Dolls
16 Nov — 2020
Portrait Dolls "Aleuts of the Commander Islands" Presented at Kamchatka Regional United Museum

The Commander Islands Nature Reserve and Kamchatka Regional United Museum have opened a virtual exhibition "In the Footsteps of the Aleutians." The exhibition, consisting of two portrait dolls of Aleutian man and woman, is dedicated to the peculiarities of life of one of the indigenous peoples of the North - the Aleuts of the Commander Islands.

Natalia Tatarenkova, the project coordinator and head of the Historical and Cultural Heritage Department of the CINBR, spoke about the creation of these unique exhibits. The dolls were commissioned by the reserve for permanent display in our visitor center on Bering Island. The portrait composition was performed by the Permian artist, the famous master of the author's doll Ekaterina Shardakova. The image was based on photographs from the 1880s and 1890s from the funds of N.I. Grodekov Khabarovsk Regional Museum  and museum objects of the same period. The geography of the exhibits in the visitor center is extensive: the cities of Irkutsk, Khabarovsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, St. Petersburg, Krakow (Poland), Washington (USA) and  Nikolskoye Village Aleutian district.

Архивное фото из фондов Хабаровского краевого музея им. Н.И. Гродекова

Archive photo from the funds of N.I. Grodekova Khabarovsk Regional Museum. Н.И. Гродекова

Virtual story in a short time transports you to the world of the past and shows the history of people who lived in the 19th century on Bering and Medny Islands - one of the most remote outskirts of Russia.

From archives of Kamchatka Regional United Museum

You may rememeber that the Aleuts from the Commander Islands are a complex ethnic group, formed on the previously uninhabited islands of the Commander Archipelago. In the early 1820s, the Russian-American company moved the first large group of Aleuts from attu Island. Later, their ranks were joined by residents of Atka, Unalaska, the islands of Pribylov, Kodiak and even the descendants Native Americans.  All the settlers were skilled sea hunters. Most of them became relatives with the Russians, forming an original Commander Islands culture.

Заповедная Россия English

Заповедная Россия English