vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #148 / Arts and Ideas / Reading article...

Every week, it seems, the calendar at the Sukhanov House Museum is packed. For those suffering from depression over the sudden bad weather in mid-August, there's a psychologist. Those anxious about their appearance and what the future holds can meet both a beautician and an astrologer. There are amateur plays, collections of metal and glass, and exhibits of art students' work.

So when you walk up the steps of the century-old wooden house and find an exhibit consisting of a small room with samples of lace, unlabeled in their cases, you may be hit with a feeling the place has overbilled itself.

But don't leave just yet. The house itself is worth looking at.

The Sukhanovs were a large family whose father was a czarist bureaucrat and son, Konstantin, was a revolutionary. Their home gives a glimpse of the lives of a prosperous family at the turn of the century, with a kid caught up in the radical idealism that would bring forth upon his nation such grief. Yet museum director Olga Oblitsova is forgiving.

"They were so similar," she said. "They liked to serve the people – only they understood it differently." The doors are mullioned glass, with windows painted in bright designs. Several of the rooms are preserved in the late 19th century Far Eastern style. In the living room stands a carved redwood settee from China, painted in black laquer the hue of road tar. An old piano has stands for candles. And upstairs is a bedroom with a brass bed built for sleepers of Napoleonic stature.

One room is filled until Aug. 31 with an exhibition by Institute of Arts students. This reviewer has always had a warm spot in his heart for art students, with their propensity toward creating sculptures out of urinals, wearing tongue studs, and dressing in Dracula color schemes. But come on, kids: big-eyed girls, pastoral scenes, all done in the socialist-realist style? Is this what they're teaching? Can you politely tell your profs all that stuff is, like, so Brezhnev-era?

But at least the institute has given the students something to rebel against. It's a sentiment Konstantin Sukhanov might have understood.