13 November 2020

New Arrivals in the State Darwin Museum Collection!

With all the sad news about museums closing due to the pandemic, we’ve found a reason for joy! The museum collection has been replenished with new objects!

Among the most spectacular new objects are gorgeous corals, valuable shells of mollusks, crustaceans, and starfish donated to the museum by Andrey Krylov, the son of Vice-Admiral and private collector Mikhail Krylov.

There are more - shells of mollusks from the family of a private collector Konstantin Gaidenko. 40 years ago, he donated over 7,000 shells to Darwin museum. Konstantin Nikolayevich was building up this collection all his life, despite being blind. After his death, part of the collection was kept by his relatives. The family decided to also donate it to the museum.

The Paleontology collection has been complemented by various fossils, including:

shells of fossil brachiopods from the Prague Museum
fossil invertebrates and plants of the now-defunct Lopatinsky phosphoritic mine (Moscow region), found by the Soviet paleontologist Vasily Mitta
teeth of rare fossil shark species donated by Sergo Ordzhonikidze Russian State University for Geological Prospecting
a fossil shell of a crab and a shell of ammonite from the collection of the Soviet amateur paleontologist Anton Erlanger

The Rare Books collection has received an interesting “Ethnographic Atlas. Non-European peoples”. This is a popular science book and textbook on the geography of the early 20th century with color lithographs. The text was written by the renowned German geographer Alfred Kirchhoff, and translated into Russian by the writer-anthropologist Dmitry Koropchevsky.

Oleg Trushin donated to the museum a textbook on the zoology of the early 20th century "Elementary course in zoology with tasks and summer classes in zoology" by the zoologist, organizer of the first Russian biological station on the White Sea, Konstantin Saint-Hilaire.

Here are some of the new objects of the Fine Art collection:

Graphic works of the famous animal painter Alexei Komarov - five expressive portraits of animals
charming watercolors depicting mushrooms by Soviet biologist and artist Vadim Kondakov

The numismatic collection was replenished with 30 coins from different countries, containing the images of animals and plants. The coins were donated to the museum by Anna Klyukina, director of the State Darwin Museum. They were part of a large collection of her grandson Yegor, who wished to contribute to the museum’s collections.