Exhibition "The Peasant World of Povazhye" at the Velsk Local History Museum

The exhibition "The Peasant World of Povazhye" is on display in the museum's exhibition hall from November 23, 2024 to September 1, 2025. It features more than 400 ethnographic artifacts from the 17th to the first half of the 20th centuries from the collections of the Velsk, Ustyansky and Shenkursky museums of Arkhangelsk Oblast, the Verkhovazhsky Museum of Vologda Oblast, and the Russian Ethnographic Museum (St. Petersburg), which illustrate the everyday life, occupations, and culture of this distinctive region of the Russian North.
The examples of traditional folk culture presented at the exhibition reflect the specificity of the ethno-cultural territory, the unity and diversity of objects that characterize various facets of life among the Russian population of Povazhye, and they also form an understanding of a particular peasant world — its way of life, spiritual and moral values, attitudes toward nature, faith, and more.
Objects of traditional culture are shown not only in their original form but also in numerous representations: ethnographic drawings, photographs, descriptions by correspondents of Prince V. N. Tenishev's "Ethnographic Bureau", paintings by a local naive artist, folk texts, audio recordings, and others.
The exhibition's authors sought to show not only the multifaceted and culturally unique nature of the peasant world but also the relevance of its values for contemporary audiences.