Exhibition "The Universe in Details: Ancient and Medieval Art of Western Siberia"

About exhibition

Rarities from the archaeological collection of the M. A. Vrubel Omsk Regional Museum of Fine Arts, assembled since the mid-1980s, and the archaeological museum of the Omsk State Pedagogical University are combined in a single space with a relief panel by Nikolai Tretyakov (1926–1989) on an archaeological theme, created in 1977 and embodying the movement of easel artists and monumentalists of contemporary Siberia in their approach to interpreting the region's ancient art. The works of ancient and medieval art on display were discovered during archaeological excavations across the Omsk Region, from the forest-steppe to the taiga of the Irtysh basin. They belong to cultures of both the early Iron Age (the turn of eras) and the Middle Ages (5th–13th centuries). The showcases present unique metal and bone objects with anthropomorphic and zoomorphic motifs (of people and animals); pottery whose hand-made ornamentation preserves for centuries the "imprint" of its creators' hands; and examples of ancient and medieval design — metal cauldrons, jewelry, and tools.