Metadata: A. K. Serzhputovskii
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- Russian Museum of Ethnography
- Holding institution (official language):
- Российский этнографический музей
- Postal address:
- Inzhenernaya St, 4/1, Sankt-Peterburg, Russia, 191011
- Phone number:
- (812) 313-45-74
- Web address:
- http://www.ethnomuseum.ru/
- Email:
- info@ethnomuseum.ru
- Reference number:
- Collection 2254
- Title:
- A. K. Serzhputovskii
- Title (official language):
- Сержпутовский А. К.
- Creator/accumulator:
- A. K. Serzhputovskii
- Date(s):
- 1909
- Language:
- Russian
- Hebrew
- Extent:
- 6 storage units
- Type of material:
- Photographic images
- Scope and content:
- [This description is based on a single catalogue entry that describes in general terms a group of three institutionally related fonds, which are listed individually in the Yerusha database.] Photographic materials in the collections pertaining to Jewish ethnography collected by A. K. Serzhputovskii on behalf of the Ethnography Department of the Russian Museum, during ethnographic excursions in particular, include views of synagogues in the city of Radin [Radzyń Podlaski] (Radin county, Sedlets province) (1909); the town of Lovich [Łowicz] (Lovich county, Warsaw province) (1909); gravestones in Jewish cemeteries in the town of Lovich [Łowicz] (Lovich county, Warsaw province) (1909); group photographs and photo-portraits of “Jewish types,” in particular: “A Jewish family by the stove in their hut,” “Jewish day laborers” (Sedlets province, 1909); “An elderly Jewish type,” “A Jew with his sons,” “A group of Jewish women” (Warsaw province, 1909); “A Jew engaged in physical labor,” “Two Jewish dyers painting a Catholic church” (Vil’na province, 1909); etc.
- Archival history:
- The photo and negative fonds of the State Museum of Ethnography was first formed in the 1890s, virtually from the moment the Russian Museum was established. At present the fonds of the Russian Museum of Ethnography’s photo archive (the photo collection) includes approximately 180,000 storage units. It consists of photographs taken by museum staff during expeditions, as well as photographs acquired from private individuals and various organisations. The main criterion for the formation of particular collections is that the photographs in question belong to a particular collection creator. This is why photos in a given collection may be devoted to different subjects and reflect different ethnic cultures, and may have been taken at different times. In cases in which photos were acquired from collection creators secondarily, a new collection is formed with corresponding numbering. At the same time, in cases in which a large quantity of photographs that can be grouped by ethnic provenance was received from a collection creator at once, standalone collections are organised. Within collections, photographs have consecutive numbering, the sequence of which relates to ethnicity and subject (if the photographs feature several ethnic groups, then for each of these, photos are grouped by subject), or subject only (if the collection’s materials pertain to only one ethnic group). A given photo collection’s sequence number depends on the overall number of exhibit items (and of collections thereof) received by the museum, including material items, as the Russian Museum of Ethnography considers photographs to have the same status as any other ethnographic item.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Aleksandr Kazimirovich Serzhputovskii (1864–1940) was an ethnographer and folklorist. He graduated from the St. Petersburg Archeology Institute in 1904. In 1906, he began working in the Ethnography Department of the Russian Museum, first as a record-keeper, then assistant (1918), deputy curator (1922), and then head of the museum’s excursion office. He combined his museum work with teaching activities. From 1918 to 1923 he taught at the First National Belorussian secondary school [gimnaziia] in Petrograd; and from 1919 to 1920, at the Workers’ Sunday University. In 1922 he was elected chair of the Belorussian sub-commission on compiling ethnographic maps and studying the ethnic makeup of the population of Russia, and he headed the analogous commission of the Russian Geographic Society. In 1925, he became a full member of the Institute of Belorussian Culture in Minsk. He assembled a great deal of ethnographic and folkloric material in Belorussia on behalf of the Russian Museum. He was the author of the studies: “Essays on Belarus” – Zhivaia starina [Living Antiquity], no. 3 (1907), no. 4 (1908), no. 1 (1909); Agricultural Tools of Belorussian Poles’e (St. Petersburg, 1910); Tales and Stories of Belorussian Poleshuks (Materials for the Study of the Art of Belarussians, and their Vernacular) (St. Petersburg, 1911); “Honey-Harvesting in Belorussia” (Materials on the Ethnography of Russia, St. Petersburg, 1914, vol. 2); etc.
- Access points: locations:
- Lovich
- Radin
- Russia
- Vil’na province
- Warsaw province
- Access points: persons/families:
- Serzhputovskii, A. K.
- System of arrangement:
- The collections include inventories systematised mainly according to the subject-thematic principle.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
