History museums showcase the narrative of a society by curating artifacts, documents, and exhibits that reflect the culture, achievements, struggles, and evolution of a culture over time. These museums provide a tangible connection to the past, presenting historical events and figures in a contextualized and often interactive manner. History museums can often be nation-building exercises as well, created and staffed by the state or powerful donors to try to encourage a specific view of a culture and its history. Thus, many of these reviews try to not only inform the reader of what the museum can teach, but also take a critical eye to the rhetoric and potential biases these museums express.
Five minutes away from Red Square, between a few small churches, stands the old palace of the famous Romanov boyars. Built by the brother-in-law of Ivan the Terrible and grandfather of Tsar Mikhail Romanov in the sixteenth century, it housed the family until 1613 when Mikhail Romanov became Tsar. After the Romanovs moved to the […]