Russian Collections

The cultural items in the following 7 museums were collected by various explorers, navigators, and employees of the Russian-American Company. Expeditions to the North Pacific area started as early as 1741 and with these voyages, collections of items created by the Indigenous peoples began to be assembled in a number of ethnographic and anthropological institutions in Europe. This digital collection is a way of documenting these overseas collections visually and sharing the details that are known about these items.

A note regarding the metadata:

Some Descriptions have been translated from Russian for accessibility as the museum websites don't always facilitate English. The wording has been kept as close as possible to the original, with some changes depending on context. 

Museum description will sometimes used the outdated "Kolush" as an attribution. I have included Tlingit here as well. At times, the Creator isn't specifically identified as "Tlingit". In these instances, the geographic origin of the item has been used instead, as seen in the museum catalog. 

The Identifier (museum generated number) has been left in Cyrillic for consistency. 

A note regarding the images:

All image rights are held by the institution indicated in the item description. Permission would need to be arranged to use these images beyond the purposes of this private collection.