In the Altai Art Museum, paintings for the exhibition were selected on the Internet

BARNAUL. The Art Museum of Altai Krai on December 20 opened a unique exhibition project dedicated to the 75th anniversary of Altai. “The People’s Exhibition - to the Homeland” - became the first in Russia collections of paintings selected by popular vote. Since April 1, two months have passed on the museum’s website, the result of which was the exhibition.

According to the curator of the exhibition, Natalya Tsareva, such a project has not yet been in museum practice. Voting was not a competition, the main goal was to select paintings that are worthy of participation in the exhibition. All paintings are in the ownership of the museum, art critics were engaged in their selection for the museum collection. However, if the exhibition is being prepared by specialists, then this is done on the basis of some concepts. Viewers approach the choice in a completely different way.

All the works posted on the museum’s website could be considered in detail, enlarging them to the full size of computer screens. The largest number of voters was noted at Museum Night, when people could cast their votes directly from computers in the museum. For voting, works of various genres and styles were presented - serious portraits, landscapes and still lifes.

Most of all, the organizers of the project surprised that for quite some time the leaders of the vote remained the work done in the severe style of Dobrovolsky and Chernov, written in the 60s of the last century. Not everyone perceives the severe style, but it turned out that people are interested in the past time and the people who lived in it. However, in the end, the painting “Summer Cafe”, the work of the young artist Dmitry Petrenko, gained the most votes, which was a pleasant surprise for the artist himself. The project organizers decided to continue to attract viewers to their work.

Ludmila Trautmane