External Links about the Karakalpaks

Contents

The Academy of Sciences from Berdaq Prospekt.

The Karakalpak Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan was created in 1959.

It is comprised of five scientific research Institutes:

                    Natural Sciences
                    Bioecology
                    Social & Economic Problems of the Aral area
                    History, Archaeology and Ethnography
                    Language and Literature

The members of these Institutes are involved with research across a broad spectrum. Many have been on exchange programmes abroad and have participated in international conferences. Several conduct research in collaboration with foreign Institutes; for example the Natural Sciences Institute works with colleagues in the USA on tuberculosis and the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography conduct joint excavations with the University of Sydney.

There is also a botanical research garden which has the status of a scientific division.

A substantial library is housed within the Academy with many gems for the Karakalpak scholar including the Sergei Tolstov library.

The Academy has published a scientific journal, the "Bulletin" since 1960. This covers a wide range of topics from all of the various Institutes. The index to this bulletin can be found on the website of the Academy. This website also has a news section with up to date information on forthcoming conferences.

Return to top of page

The Qaraqalpaqstan State Museum of Art, No'kis

The new museum building in 2004.

However, the museum's main claim to fame comes from its amazing collection of Soviet avante garde paintings rather than from its ethnographical materials. Both were collected by the museum's extraordinary and much loved founder, Igor Savitsky.

Igor Vitalievitch Savitsky was born in Kiev in 1915, just before the October Revolution, the son of a relatively well-off and established Ukrainian family – his father was a lawyer and his grandfather a professor of Slavic studies. In the early 1920's his family moved to Moscow and the young Savitsky was encouraged to draw and to paint, going on to study at the "1905 School of Art". He was later sent to work in the studio of a well-known local artist, who happened to be a friend of the Zhdanko family (see below).

Savitsky worked at the Sounkov Institute from 1941 to 1946, avoiding conscription on health grounds. In 1942 the Institute evacuated him to the relative safety of Samarkand, giving him an opportunity to experience life in Central Asia at first hand.

Having returned to Moscow after the war, Savitsky was given the chance to return to Central Asia in 1950. The ethnographer Tatiana Zhdanko invited him to join the Khorezm Archaeological and Ethnographical Expedition, organised by the charismatic Moscow archaeologist Sergei Tolstov. In Karakalpakstan Savitsky worked as an illustrator for some seven years, attached to the Institute of Ethnography at the Academy of Sciences in No'kis, sketching and drawing the monuments and finds excavated by the archaeologists. It was during this period that he developed his interest in the ethnography of the Karakalpaks being studied by Zhdanko and her team. He started to collect local Karakalpak folk art, visiting towns and villages throughout the delta. As his enthusiasm for local Karakalpak culture developed he decided to abandon his flat in central Moscow and to go and live permanently in No'kis.

From 1957 to 1966, Savitsky worked at the Laboratory of Karakalpak Applied Art at the Karakalpak Branch of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences. It was during this period that he accumulated the core of his ethnographical collection, visiting villages throughout the delta and purchasing examples of Karakalpak material culture from bewildered shepherds, farmers and housewives. In time he had assembled thousands of items representing every aspect of Karakalpak folk art: costume, jewellery, carpets, yurt decorations, wood carvings, horse trappings and domestic utensils.

At the same time he continued to paint, encouraging young Karakalpak artists and forming a local Karakalpak School of Art. He began to travel by train to Moscow, Leningrad and Tashkent, bringing back examples of Russian and Central Asian paintings from the 1920's and the 1930's to inspire his fellow artists. As his collection of paintings grew, he badgered the authorities in No'kis to establish a local art museum. His ambition was achieved in 1966, when he was appointed director of the first Karakalpak Museum of Art.

The two decades following the Revolution had seen the emergence and flowering of a new creative and original style of painting - the so-called Soviet school of art. But it was short lived. After Stalin's rise to power in the late 1920's, the cultural environment became increasingly more conservative and authoritarian – especially during the dangerous Stalin purges, from 1934 to 1941. Communist politicians encouraged artists to follow the path of "Soviet realism" and those who failed to tow the line soon found themselves jailed, exiled or confined to mental asylums. After the war Stalin initiated a further reign of terror, encouraging a witch-hunt of "anti-Soviet" writers, artists, musicians, academics and scientists. Even jazz was banned. It was a sign of the times – in America a similar witch-hunt was organized by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Even though Khrushchev encouraged a more liberal environment following Stalin's death in 1953, painting remained a contentious subject. In 1962 Khrushchev had reacted to an exhibition of abstract art in Moscow by exclaiming: "The people and government have taken a lot of trouble with you, and you pay them back with this shit!" Twelve years later, bulldozers were used to destroy an open-air exhibition of modern art in the same city.

Savitsky was undertaking potentially dangerous work, punishable by detention in a work camp had he been exposed to the wrong people in Moscow. He was collecting the work of forgotten, often forbidden artists, visiting their poverty-stricken widows or surviving family members, who were more than happy to sell the sketches and canvasses languishing in their attics and basements in return for some roubles or, if Savitsky lacked the funding, an IOU. His main protection was that his museum was located in the remote, isolated and unheard-of territory of Karakalpakstan. Even so he did not totally avoid scrutiny. As news of his collection leaked out, he faced opposition from uncomprehending officials, attacks from jealous art critics and visits from commissions of enquiry who warned him about continuing with his dangerous pursuit.

Fortunately Savitsky remained undaunted and his collection gained increasing notoriety. In 1969 some examples of the collection were displayed in the Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow and in the 1970's the museum received its first foreign visitors. The Soviet Ministry of Culture even began to help finance some of the museum's acquisitions. In 1981, the Union of Moscow Artists held their meeting in the museum at No'kis. By now Savitsky had become a workaholic, sleeping only a few hours a night and never taking a holiday. His health began to suffer and on several occasions he was found in hospital in a dreadful state. He was eventually confined to a hospital bed, from which he continued to run his museum, seeking yet more paintings for his collection. After his release from hospital, he ignored medical advice to rest in a sanatorium and continued his quest for new artists. His health continued to falter and he finally died in hospital in Moscow in 1984. His body was returned to his beloved No'kis for burial.

We have met numerous people in No'kis who knew Savitsky well. Despite his one-dimensional passion for his paintings, it seems that he was an extremely kind and humane man, taking great care of his staff at the museum.

Ironically in the year following his death, Mikhail Gorbachëv came to power and ushered in the period of glasnost (openness). At last it became safe for museums to open up their collections of once forbidden art. Previously closed to foreigners, Karakalpakstan suddenly became accessible to western tourists following the Soviet collapse in 1991. The Savitsky collection provided the new independent government in Tashkent with an opportunity to illustrate the oppression exerted by their former Russian colonial masters.

In the past the State Museum of Art occupied two buildings in No'kis, the main art gallery on the corner of Qaraqalpaqstan ko'shesi, which was shared with the Regional Studies Museum, and the ethnographical collection on G'a'rezsizlik ko'shesi. Both had a wonderful provincial atmosphere. Following independence, the Uzbek Ministry of Culture planned a new and larger building on a green-field site close to Sharif Rashidov ko'shesi to house the entire Savitsky collection, and work on the structure finally began in the late 1990's. However after completing the concrete shell, the project ran out of money and it was not until 2002 that work recommenced to complete the building. The new museum was officially opened by President Islam Karimov on 12th September 2003.

We thoroughly recommend a visit to this wonderful museum. The ethnography and archaeology collections are displayed on the first floor and the art gallery is on the second floor. There is a very nice café on the ground floor which is unfortunately closed at the moment, along with a cloakroom and toilets. The Director of the Museum is the very approachable and helpful Marinika Babanazarova, who worked under Igor Savitsky and speaks excellent English. The museum is very welcoming and has several English-speaking guides.

The museum can easily be visited by car from Khiva in one day (about 2 hours in each direction). If staying overnight in No'kis, on no account should you stay at the abysmal Tashkent Hotel. The Jipek Joly is the best hostelry in town. See our Tour Guide of Karakalpakstan.

The museum has a new multi-lingual website.

Click here for the website of the museum.

Return to top of page

The Regional Studies Museum, No'kis

The Regional Studies Museum in No'kis.

After the Russians conquered Khiva in 1873 there was a brief flurry of activity as artists and intellectuals arrived from Saint Petersburg and Moscow to investigate this new addition to the expanding Empire. However they showed very little interest in the Karakalpaks and by the 1890's the Khivan Khanate had become a forgotten backwater. Things were very different following the 1917 Revolution. As early as 1920, a museums committee had been established in Tashkent to preserve the monuments and historical artefacts of Turkestan. At that time the Khorezm oasis was still a bastion of counter-revolution, and it took some years before an obedient regime was installed in the province. The Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast was finally formed in 1925 as a province of the Kyrgyz (Kazakh) ASSR. By 1928 discussions were already underway about the possibility of establishing a museum in Shımbay, then being considered as a possible future capital of the Karakalpak Oblast. The leader of the Regional Studies Bureau was already highlighting the need to collect exhibits for the future museum, possibly encouraged by the recent arrival of Alexandr Melkov at the head of an ethnographical expedition organised by the Society of Research on Kazakhstan. His team soon began collecting and painting examples of local folk art and photographing many examples of Karakalpak life.

On the 16th May 1929, the new museum opened in To'rtku'l with an exhibition of some of the costumes, artefacts and photographs collected by Melkov during the previous seven months. By 1930 the museum had over 1,000 exhibits.

In 1930 the Karakalpak Oblast was transferred from Kazakhstan to the Russian SFSR and was upgraded to an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1932. Finally in 1936 it was transferred from Russia to the Uzbek SSR. The Karakalpak capital was relocated from To'rtku'l to No'kis in 1939 following the destruction of the western part of To'rtku'l by the Amu Darya. Consequently the Regional Studies Museum was moved to larger premises in No'kis.

Sadly the Regional Studies Museum tends to be eclipsed by its larger and better known neighbour, especially since the Savitsky art collection has been moved out from the upper floor into the brand new Art Museum. Many foreigners visit No'kis without even realizing the existence of a second museum. The Regional Studies Museum faces Independence Square and is within walking distance of the Savitsky Museum.

The cover of a 1992 No'kis publication about the museum.

Return to top of page

The Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow

Return to top of page

The Russian Museum of Ethnography, Saint Petersburg

The Russian Museum.

Many works of art were donated to the museum by members of the Russian Imperial Royal family. The growing collection soon placed demands on space and the architect V. F. Svinin was commissioned to design an imposing new building for the Memorials and Ethnographic Departments. Construction began in 1902 and was completed in 1911, resulting in the classical building that we see today.

The Russian Ethnography Museum.

Dr Elena Tsareva displaying a complete yesikqas from the museum fund, 2002.

Return to top of page

Home Page