Abram I. Lipman — first researcher of the Kunstkamera’s of the Imperial Academy of Sciences building

Abstract

The article focuses on the work of the Leningrad architect Abram I. Lipman on preparing the document “Passport No. 3 certifying the Institute’s of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR building as a monument” for placing the Kunstkamera’s building under state protection. This was the first comprehensive historical and architectural research work devoted to the history of the construction, reconstruction and restoration of the first Russian historical and scientific museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, for the period from 1717 to 1937. The passport dates back to 1938 and consists primarily of a historical essay on the construction of this historical monument, a brief biography of architects, a detailed story about the construction and restoration of the Kunstkamera in the 18th century — beginning of the 20th century. The work was carried out by order of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) dated August 10, 1933, which included, among other issues, the establishment of a list of monuments subject to state protection. The list was approved on March 20, 1935, and the Kunstkamera’s building was taken under state protection. The structure of the “Passport” is given in the article, as well as the main provisions of the reviews. The appendices to the article present several documents: a chronology of repair work done on the Kunstkamera’s building from the second half of the 19th century through the first-third of the twentieth century, a chronology of architectural construction and restoration works from the 18th through the first-third of the 20th century, and A. I. Lipman’s proposals on the restoration project of the Kunstkamera’s building. The work allows us to recreate the overall systemic field of the organization of the restoration of the historical appearance of the Kunstkamera’s building, carried out in the late 1940s.