Part of the endowment that Thomas Whitney has provided to create and operate the Amherst Center for Russian Culture includes an annual income to purchase new materials for the collection.
The Amherst Center for Russian Culture actively acquires new materials related to our existing collection strengths and current initiatives. We are currently working on our Collections Development Policy and will have more information soon.
Acquisitions from 2014-2015
“Soviet Architecture” 1931-1934
A complete run of 15 issues in 19 numbers of this architectural journal (which should not be confused with the journal issued by the Union of Soviet Architects beginning in 1951). The design and layout for the 1931 issues were by V. Stepanova. The Editor-in-Chief was N. Miliutin.
Sovetskaia arkhitektura began publication when all architectural movements were being merged into VANO, an association of architectural organizations that existed between 1930 and 1932. As an interim publication that followed SA and preceded Arkhitektura SSSR, Sovetskaia arkhitektura covered activity in the Soviet architectural community during the crucial transition period of 1931-33. Of particular value are the articles that deal with the pros and cons of constructivist and functionalist architecture. The target audience was working architects an municipal planners.
“Iskusstvo v Massy” and “Za Proletarskoe Iskusstvo”
A Magazine of the Association of Artists of the Revolution: AKhR
The complete run 1929-1932.
"Art to the Masses" 1929-30. 20 numbers in 15 issues. Re-named "For Proletarian Art" 1931-32. 22 numbers in 18 issues. All issues are profusely illustrated with works of major artists and articles on art related theories.
Acquisitions from 2015-2016
“Prozhektor” (“Searchlight”)
"Prozhektor" was a prominent illustrated literary arts and satirical magazine published in Moscow from February 1923 through 1935 by Pravda Publishing House. The magazine printed the drawings of the best Soviet artists and caricaturists: Deineka, Kozlinsky, Vreia, Eliseev, Miliutin, Kustodiev, Ganf, Lebedev, Rotov, Efimov, the Kukrynisky, Deni, Moor and others.
"Prozhektor" had its own correspondents in Western Europe and the U.S. Up to 70 photos appeared in each issue (photo reportage, photo montage, photo portraits) with works by Alpert, Olga, Elizavita and Boris Ignatovich, Debakov, Petrusov, and others; and Constructivist design advertising on many of the back covers.
"Prozhektor," founded in 1923, played a pivotal role in stimulating the development of photojournalism in the Soviet Union.
The Alma Law Archive
The Alma Law Archive is a large collection of books, periodicals, video and audio tapes, microfilms, slides, photographs, and research documents about Russian theatre in the 1920s and 1930s and centered about Vsevolod Meyerhold in particular. Much of the collection documents developments and trends in Soviet theatre of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, including interviews with prominent artists and critics.
Acquisitions from 2016-2017
The Victor Krivulin Papers: Four handwritten notebooks (1970-1973) containing original poems, rough drafts and drawings of the Leningrad/Petersburg poet Victor Krivulin (1944-2001), plus 16 original photographs, letters to his wife at the time, and some poems in manuscript and typescript.