Children's Museum Center

We were in the children's museum center on the territory of the Kremlin behind the building of public places for two small exhibitions. The first is called "From Devonian to Divan. Prehistoric Animals and Plants of Western Siberia". The exhibition itself comes from somewhere in Khanty-Mansiysk, where, apparently, the remains of prehistoric animals and plants are well preserved in the permafrost. Basically, all the exhibits are fossils, stones with traces and prints, and bones. Of the more or less decorated remains, there is a mammoth skeleton and a skull of some ancient deer with huge antlers resembling wings in a span. The exhibition seemed boring to me. It is, of course, children's and, perhaps, for children (those of them who are inquisitive) it will be interesting, but for me it is too simple and modest. The only living exhibit in the exhibition are large cockroaches, which seem to originate from the island of Madagascar. They sit in a glass aquarium and are shown as creatures that have lived on earth for several tens or even hundreds of millions of years without much change for themselves. Cockroaches are large, 6-8 centimeters long, black. To see them, however, is difficult, since they all hid behind the "decoration" of the aquarium. There seem to be fourteen of them. The second exhibition is called "City of the Boy Onfim". Who is the boy Onfim, I will not explain in detail here, since Novgorodians, in theory, should know. Let me briefly note that this is a real boy who lived in the 13th century, whose birch bark letters were discovered during excavations in Novgorod. A monument to him was erected on Velikaya Street last year. The exhibition is very childish and, in fact, is intended to show children how other children, like them, lived in antiquity. There are tables in the hall, probably intended for classes or some kind of master classes. What I liked was a lot of popular prints on the themes of life in ancient Novgorod, hung on the walls. I remember a picture of a fist fight. The fight itself is not on it, and the two sides are only still converging before the fight. The funny thing about it is that these converging peasants are drawn as if they are dancing, while the expression on their faces is so bright, radiant, with a smile that it is somehow hard to believe that in a minute they will start threshing each other so spiritually. In general, the appearance of the heroes depicted to us in the picture somehow does not fit the declared theme. The exhibition also shows many sewn rag dolls with a height of about 30-40 centimeters. The dolls are designed to personify the inhabitants of ancient Novgorod in accordance with their professional activities and social status. There is even a doll with the name Archbishop Jonah. What's interesting is that several of the dolls have openly drunken faces. There is a curious doll there, apparently on the topic of the day, with the name "Bailiff". His muzzle, by the way, is not drunk. This is what national traditions and continuity mean.

Wonderful section of the Museum-Reserve. Really motivated employees who are always inventing new programs, exhibitions and master classes.

Everything was very well organized ... As far as I am always skeptical about the events of Novgorod, but this time I liked it))) A lot of entertaining workshops, theatrical productions were also impressive. We also got to the nativity scene (shadow theater) in the museum, very cool.😊

Festival "Onfim gathers friends" - the best museum festival!

A beautiful, interesting place. It conveys the mood of old Russia. The children really enjoyed the master class on making fabric dolls. And the doll museum is also very exciting. We really enjoyed your visit. Thank!