Cambridge – conferences and collections

Tomorrow and Friday, Cambridge will be the venue of the 2018 COSEELIS conference.  The COSEELIS conference always ends with a tour of a local collection, and this year our delegates will visit the University Library (UL) to see some of the pieces being used for the on-going virtual exhibition Revolution: the First Bolshevik Year.  A few recently used exhibits are shown here.  The exhibition makes use of one of the great treasures of the UL’s Slavonic collections – the Catherine Cooke collection of Russian architecture and design.

Earlier this year, we had the privilege of announcing the wonderful news of a forthcoming donation of a collection of staggering proportions that will join the Cooke collection to make the Cambridge “one of the leading centres in the world for the study of late Imperial and early Soviet art and design” (Dr Jessica Gardner, University Librarian).  This is the library of the eminent art historian Professor John Bowlt (shown here in the UL with his wife Professor Nicoletta Misler).  Please read more about this amazing news here: https://europeancollections.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/the-bowlt-misler-collection-russian-and-soviet-art-history/

We look forward to receiving the Bowlt-Misler collection in a few years’ time.  Its contents will doubtless be enjoyed by COSEELIS delegates of the future.

Mel Bach
Slavonic Specialist, Cambridge University Library