The museum of Nature and Hunting will be opened soon in Kaluga. It”ll be the first zoological museum in Russia, designed for a wide audience, where you can see the dynamic light exposure of the most famous the planet's biotopes. There won't be the standard set of animals,placed on shelves and showcases.
The idea to make such museum and to how to show animals to people, matured a long time ago We discussed it lots of times, dreamed but nothing changed. All talks finished by the conclusion that one day we’d realize it. Why have we started to talk about it? My becoming as a taxidermist had happened in the zoological museum. I talk about the Zoological Museum in Saint Petersburg. With all due respect to the masters of the Academic school, there I formed the idea how to present the exposition for the audience to make it more interesting. I’m sure that the usage of modern technologies which allow to feel the atmosphere that reigns in the habitat of certain animals.
It was just theory but later I realized that our taxidermy studio is ready to bring this idea to life. We needed the only thing - finance. Each good idea needs to be supported by finance. You can’t make a step without it especially when we talk about such ambitious project. We were lucky to meet a person who was keen in that idea and agreed to support that complex but interesting project. These two moments are the core-stones of each project. It has no sense to start the work while we haven't learned new technologies and to use them as we can do it now. I won’t write about the financial side of the question because it's absolutely cleat that project without money is like a body without blood. It demands so much investments that I can compare the man, who agreed to help us with the famous philanthropists from the past - Pavel Tretaykova and Sava Mamontov. These words mean a lot. Unfortunately, nowadays the chance to meet such people like Mavrody or Polonsky higher. I respect all people who support the others.
Every aspect of the projected needed investments starting from the purchase of land, building of the museum to the collection and processing the extracted material. We asked the Governor of the region Anatoly Artamonov to help us and got his support. He helped to find and to choose the place for the future museum In future the Administration will transfer to the Pravoberezhny region of Kaluga. It’s an outskirts now but will become a center. The museum will be surrounded by parks and ponds. It'll be beautiful. We could hardly overestimate the role of the governor in this regard. He allocated land for development. We didn’t use the finished building as the most of museums. Everything started from the very beginning according the special project. The exhibition place will take 5000 meters. It’s bigger than in Darwin Museum in Moscow. The process doesn’t go fast.
One more moment I have to mention. Museum staff know how difficult it is to get the exhibit. It's a huge and expensive problem. None of the Russian museums (and not many museums in the world) can send the special expeditions all over the world to get the animals collections. Our investor is a hunter who travels all over the world and gets the trophies for our collection. But this only partially solves the problem. We need the help of other hunters to decide this problem. Our goal is to get the collection, consisted of 7 species of Bushbucks. It's hard task for a one hunter to take all seven trophies but possible for seven hunters who will hunt in different regions. I know that some trophy hunters have overfilled their trophy rooms already. There are not free space in their hunting houses but trips go on. They begin to donate their taxidermy compositions to everybody who asks. I would like to address to these hunters and others who are interested in our proposal to gift us the salted or freeze skins of their trophies. I can explain why we talk about skins because all composition in the future museum have been designed already. We’ll put them in special poses that impossible to make with the finished ones. Even if they were made in our studio. Unfortunately, we don’t need the stuffed animals. Most of the hunters needs a skull with the horns. Not all of them need skin and we hope that they won't doubt to give it to the museum or not.
We’ll use plastic replicas instead of real horns. A special plaque will indicate the name of the hunter who made such a gift to the museum. I’m sure that we’ll get the collection of world animals with such help. We are interested in the most characteristic, memorable animals. And different Russian fishes too.
The working name of the museum is the Museum of Nature and Hunting. I would like to note the continuity of generations in this title. The hunters know that the first magazine “Nature and Hunting”, the longest periodical in our country, has been published 140 years ago. It was a large – up to 240 pages-monthly magazine which became the best among the others devoted to fishing or hunting. The creator of this unique periodical was the great Leonid Pavlovich Sabaneyev I’m sure that all Russian popular science literature on hunting and fishing begins with this person. I want to believe that our museum will continue this glorious tradition. There is one more the philosophical aspect that we put into the name of the museum. Nature is the first and hunting is the most ancient but still wide and effective way of nature evolution. I mean hunting in common sense not only people who hunt for animals but the natural part of nature where everybody hunts for everything. As a biologist, I regard hunting as one of the natural manifestations of evolution and an effective form of maintaining the ecological balance in nature. I know about people who love nature by TV but are fully ignorant in terms of ecology and condemn hunting. I hope that our museum will be one of the educational centers of the country that helps to change this mentality. Hunting is more about the conservation and breeding of animals, as well as the selection and regulation of numbers. The density of animal’s population is some of the hunting farms are much higher than in the natural reserves not talking about forests around cities. Hunting is a way of life of many peoples of the world, including the northern peoples in our country. We are going to create the Department of Anthropology, to present life-size human ancestor dummies that have survived only because they could hunt.
The Museum of Nature and Hunting will not become a museum of hunting trophies. We don't think about high trophy performance when going to expeditions. We try to collect animals of different ages and genders to make the maximum realistic picture. These are not only mammals, but also birds and reptiles. Invertebrates will be represented in the biotopes, where they are an integral part. But the main exhibits will still be vertebrates.
The new museum will differ from the existed ones not only because we build the special building. Russian zoological museums traditionally use the system of the systematization of the collection, developed before the Revolution. All collections have the scientific character and represent the unique repositories of animals and plants collected in a variety of expeditions by famous and not-so-famous specialists. We don't pretend to the name of the scientific repository. It’ll be show- museum. It is planned as an exhibition area, as a part of hunting world, friendly to the hunting community. We are going to provide the place to organize meetings and conferences for hunters. Our space will be opened for different thematic exhibitions.
The structure of the museum will be divided into several zones - the nature of Africa, Russia, America, Asia, Australia, and so on. The wildlife of mountains, fishes and birds will be exhibited in the separate zone. The animals won’t stand on the shelves but presented in their bio groups as if you see them in the nature.
The general task is to create landscape compositions so that people who have not the opportunity to visit different countries and different continents can see this wildlife in a concentrated form and get the feeling that he has been there. We’ll pay special attention to vegetation in our compositions. There are the unique flowers such as the Queen of the Night cactus blooming at night, the Victoria regia water lily holding a baby on its leaf, the one-and-a-half-meter purple speckled Rafflesia flower – which are specific to a particular biotope. But from another side all these flowers ordinary for the definite regions. We’ll try to reproduce it as accurately as possible.
One more aspect is light. It’ll change from day to night several times during the definite period of time. The visitors will be able to experience a pleasant relaxation from the evening twilight, and stand under the starry sky, and meet the dawn somewhere in the foothills of Kilimanjaro. They’ll be able to hear the voices of birds, the night cries of animals, the noise of the wind, the noise of the waterfall, and so on. We will try to use as many modern technologies as possible in order to create a presence effect.
The museum will be interested for hunters too. There they’ll see the full collection of Russian ducks which they can hunt, and which cannot. There are not places where you can see them now. The serious informative base will help them to get full information about hunting species and where they can hunt for it. Computer modules can provide information to those who want to understand the taxonomy. This place will be interesting for pupils and students from the specialized faculties, for bird- watchers and all people who love nature.
At the end of the article, I will say that we already have already started. We made several exhibits and collected materials for future work. We make all compositions in our Moscow studio and send to Kaluga for storage. The workshop in Kaluga is almost finished. The Governor visited it and we hope that he realized that the process goes on. The first exhibitions in the already built museum will be opened in a year and a half or two.
