St Petersburg 1900

If it's pissing down with rain, it must be another Perth Bloggers Meet-Up. Stay dry, guys.

Me, I'm putting my feet up tonight after not one, but two treks through the St Petersburg 1900 exhibition up at the old AG of WA. Fabulous show, especially with a guided tour by one of the curators. Perk of the job.

The offside is somehow getting the boss to show up to his appointments on time, while putting together an award-winning program about said exhibition. Uh-huh.

My favourite moment in the exhibition was turning a corner and unexpectedly coming face to face with somene I'd only ever encountered in books:

This is one of the most extraordinary portraits of its type, and I never expected to meet it without travelling to Russia. But here he is in little old Perth, Kramskoi's portrait of Ivan Shiskin, himself an extraordinarily fine landscape artist.

Oh, and there's a Faberge egg and some happy snaps of the last Tsar when he was still just a Prince playing dress-up as Onegin, and costumes and set designs from the Imperial Theatres, and fabulous examples of the beginnings of minimalist paintings... it's just an astounding exhibition. Not only have the Russians allowed their treasures to travel out of the country at all, but that it was Perth that pulled off this coup.

Go see!