NGO Аgency for support of cultural initiatives "Tranzit", Tranzit Kaliningrad region, culture Kaliningrad region, Culture
Kaliningrad Regional Museum of Amber
State cultural institution
236016, Russia, Kaliningrad, Marshala Vassilevskogo square, 1
+7 (4012) 466 550
www.ambermuseum.ru
Director – Tatiana Suvorova
The Kaliningrad Regional Museum of Amber is the only Russian museum which acquaints its visitors with the Baltic “gold” – amber. The creation of such museum was due to the fact that the Kaliningrad region has the largest amber deposit in the world on its territory. The museum is dedicated to a single mineral and its collection houses over 11000 items.
The museum’s activities seek to systematize natural science, historical and cultural knowledge about amber. For this reason amber is considered and presented in the context of several interrelated sciences: paleontology, mineralogy, geology, history, archeology, natural science and art history.
The Museum of Amber has a busy exhibition schedule. Every year the museum receives and holds abroad and in other Russian cities about 17-19 temporary exhibitions. In 2006 it hosted the exhibition from Japan, in 2007 exhibited “Lithuanian jewellery in a trunk”. In 2008 the museum held several exhibitions in Cannes and Paris in the framework of the Days of Culture of the Kaliningrad region in France. Also that year the museum exchanged exhibitions with the Riga Museum of Applied Arts and Design. It also holds an exhibition in the Palanga Amber Museum in Lithuania. In 2009 the museum performed an exhibition of Dominican amber from the paleontological museum of Hamburg University.
Among the museum’s partners are the largest Russian museums, as well as such international partners as the Swedish Institute, the Lithuanian Institute, the Gdansk Amber Museum and other institutions from the Baltic countries.
The Amber Museum carries out active publishing and educational work.
Since 2005 (2007, 2009) the Museum of Amber has been organizing the International Biennale of Author’s Works of Amber “Alatyr” (which means “amber” in Old Russian). The Biennale receives participants from such countries as Denmark, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain and UK.
The Amber Museum organizes and curates the intermuseum project “Night of Museums” which unites 13 city and regional museums.
For the last 5 years the number of visitors has increased by 70000 people, the number of exhibitions has grown ninefold. The museum holds 15 times more events and conducts 5 times more excursions. Its main collection is 3 times as large as it used to be. The museum published 16 books on amber (whereas during the period of 1979-2003 only one book was published). In 2006 the Government of the Kaliningrad region approved the target program “The development of amber sector in the Kaliningrad region for the years 2007-2011” including one of the sub-programs “The development of SCI “Amber museum” and cultural and educational sector of the amber branch”.
Today The Kaliningrad Museum of Amber is heading towards becoming a methodological, information and research centre specializing in the study of amber in Russian and international contexts.
The museum is committed to enhancing international and regional cooperation in order to increase the number of countries participating in the International Biennale of author’s works of amber “Alatyr” and to implement programs aimed at strengthening the importance of the museum as a research and educational centre of the amber industry in the Kaliningrad region.
