Architectural Historian and Russian North Specialist William Brumfield Discussed Vologda Territory in Meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US
Last week (Friday 19) American professor and architectural historian William Craft Brumfield visited the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the United States. The scholar met with His Excellency, Plenipotentiary Ambassador Anatoly Antonov—formerly Director of the Department of Security and Disarmament at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Undersecretary of Defense at the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
The meeting was symbolic: Antonov represents the interests of Russia in the United States, and Brumfield—Professor of Slavic Studies at Tulane University in New Orleans—has devoted his life to the study of Russia’s historical and cultural heritage. Over the course of fifty years of scholarly activity, this Honorary Fellow of the Russian Academy of the Arts has studied and described in detail hundreds of architectural monuments and has created a unique photographic archive. This archive is preserved and made available at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. In digital form much of the archive is presented at the site cultinfo.ru.
One of the themes raised in the course of the meeting with the Russian Ambassador to the US was the historical significance of Vologda and the Vologda territory. This theme is not accidental, since Brumfield has long worked in Vologda and the Vologda lands and has published a series of books dedicated to the Vologda territory in general, as well as to specific towns such as Veliky Ustiug, Kirillov, Ferapontovo, Ustiuzhna, Vologda and Cherepovets.
His Excellency Anatoly Antonov expressed gratitude to Professor Brumfield for his extraordinary help in the preservation and dissemination of knowledge about the cultural legacy of Russia. In turn, the Professor presented the Embassy with a copy of his book Architecture at the End of the Earth: Photographing the Russian North.