Brodsky and 'Russian Samovar'

The 'One and a Half Rooms' Museum in St. Petersburg is one of the most unusual. It is a museum of space. This is where Iosif lived, at once a 'quasi‑literary drone' and a Nobel laureate.
There are practically no exhibits in the museum (there are many books, there is even a library), but there is a room that you can fill with yourself, your impressions, emotions, thoughts.

It should be said that the exhibitions here are unconventional too; they are always inspired by something rather than made to an assigned theme. Today the museum is filled with 'Russian Samovar' — the most popular Russian restaurant in New York, where incredible meetings with those 'gone forever' happened in the 1980s. After all, friends were often seen off from the Soviet Union forever. No one could have imagined that the situation would change so much that actors, artists, musicians, and poets would be able to travel from the USSR to America for tours or cultural events and meet with friends.
'Russian Samovar' was created by Roman Kaplan, pooling the financial contributions of his friends: Mikhail Baryshnikov and Iosif Brodsky (this was part of Iosif's Nobel prize). But the main contribution of the resident of the 'one-and-a-half rooms' was not this, but the fact that his personality attracted visitors to the place. And Roman Kaplan, being the life of the party, not only entertained friends but also asked them to leave something as a memento. For this there were special albums, folders, shelves... Completely unique improvisations and carefully prepared gifts ended up in this collection, which is now on public display in the museum. For just three months anyone who comes to the museum will have access to poems, drawings, photographs, prints... A true memory of an era. The exhibition is called "Our homeland is 'Russian Samovar'."

"Enter here, weary man,
And rest from foreign quarrels.
The whole world will seem a stranger to us,
Our homeland is 'Russian Samovar'!"
Vasily Aksyonov

It is important to know that the museum in question is incredibly popular both with St. Petersburgers and with tourists. Getting in "same-day" is impossible. A ticket for a tour can be purchased in advance on the website. During exhibitions there are both specialized tours of the exposition and traditional ones covering the whole space. But you will be able to enter the one-and-a-half rooms themselves and spend enough time there in any case.

PS: on the ground floor, beneath the museum, there is a chic bookshop and the bar 'The End of a Beautiful Era'

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