Description of the attraction
The world's first museum of circus art was opened in 1928 at the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) circus. The decision to create such a museum belongs to the teacher of stage movement at the theater school, one of the founders of the Leningrad Theater Museum - Andreev Vasily Yakovlevich. He served as an officer in the tsarist army, then worked as a fencing teacher, and he also acted as the first director of the museum. At first, the museum was called the Museum of Circus and Variety and had a narrow focus, and then it turned into a museum of circus art and acquired an extensive field of activity.
Initially, the museum funds were replenished with materials about the circus and stage from the personal collections of Andreev and E. P. Gershuni - director, circus worker, critic.
The purpose of the museum was to collect information for the study, systematization and analysis of the historical side of the circus. So, in 1930, museum materials were significantly enriched with the first fundamental research on the history of the circus - the book "Circus: Origin, Development, Prospects". She was born in 1931. Its author was Evgeny Mikhailovich Kuznetsov, a circus theorist and a prominent Soviet historian.
Museum funds have been and are being created largely thanks to circus artists donating posters, photographs, programs, costumes and other circus objects and materials to the museum. Now the museum has approximately 90,000 exhibits. The museum collection consists of several collections that contain Russian and foreign material: library, video library, photo library; departments of circus programs, posters, handwritten material, newspaper clippings, plastic forms, props and costumes.
Nowadays, the main part of the museum funds is located in two adjacent rooms, which are specially equipped with showcases and cabinets for storing material. The existing furnishings of the rooms were designed in 1989 by the artist M. Gorelik. Museum employees work here, specialists who study issues related to circus art often come here, artists drop in, interested in information about their genre. The principle of material cataloging allows to quickly satisfy the requests of visitors. On the basis of the funds of this museum, many books on the theory and history of circus art were created, theses and dissertations were developed.
Spectators of the Leningrad Circus from the very first year of the museum's existence could visit exhibitions in the foyer of the first floor. In 1928 it was possible to visit the exhibition "Predators in the Circus", which was replaced by the exhibition "Animal Training". Later exhibitions also told about certain genres of circus art: about clowning, juggling, equestrian circus. In 1975, the management of the circus allocated a room on the second floor of the building, with an area of about 180 m², for the organization of periodic exhibitions.
Recently, visitors to the exhibition hall could visit exhibitions dedicated to various topics: "To the 100th anniversary of the Pencil", "The artist and the circus", "The circus about time and about yourself", "Circus artists during the Second World War", "Circus through the eyes of children ". Special excursions are also organized here, which include, in addition to a story on the topic of the exposition, an interactive lesson with visitors. On the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the founding of the St. Petersburg Circus, the exhibition "Many-Faced Circus" was organized in the newly-made exhibition hall.
The museum organizes and conducts not only its own expositions, but also provides information for exhibitions in our country and abroad (Germany 1972, Czechoslovakia 1976, Belgium 1996, Finland 2002, 2004-2006).
