November 3, 2022: director of
Taganrog Museum of Architecture and Urbanism Marianna Grigoryan took part in the All-Russian Scientific Conference "Art Authentication". It was held in Saint Petersburg at Museum of the Academy of Arts. Marianna Grigoryan presented her paper "The History of Yakov Rubanchik's Archive: Taganrog, Saint Petersburg, Moscow..." Yevgeny Sverdlov - an artist and grand-nephew of Yakov Rubanchik was present at the event. The family, currently residing in Israel, decided to donate Rubanchik's memorabilia to Taganrog Group of Museums.
Yakov Rubanchik (1899-1948) was a Leningrad architect and artist, who was born in Taganrog and studied at Taganrog Boys' Gymnasium (now "Chekhov Gymnasium" museum). During the Great Patriotic War, he chose to stay with his family in the besieged city of Leningrad, where he spent all 872 days of the Blockade. Rubanchik was an eyewitness, who chronicled the events in the besieged city by his drawings. These pictures were assembled into Yakov Rubanchik's archive.
Thanks to Yevgeny Sverdlov and his mother, the artist's niece Yelena Sverdlova, the collection of Taganrog Group of Museums will be enriched with the following items:
Rubanchik's graduation photobook (1917-1918); some teachers and students from there were descendants of renowned Taganrog families;
a large image of Rubanchik's teachers and classmates;
two photographs of Yakov Rubanchik that served as identity cards in 1918 and 1919;
the only known picture of Gladkov House on Ulitsa Petrovskaya, while it housed the studio of Joseph Rubanchik - Yakov's father;
Joseph Rubanchik's self-portrait;
a silver sign of Odessa Department of the Imperial Russian Technical Society; its image was used as quality mark in every picture of Joseph Rubanchik's photo studio.
We express our heartfelt and sincere thanks to the Sverdlov family for their generous gift.
Taganrog has already received numerous donations related to its remarkable history. For example, in June 2016, Mrs. Patricia Elizabeth Engel (Norwalk, CT, USA) presented the so-called "De Bottari Collection" to Taganrog Group of Museums. It consisted of about 50 photographs and about 40 drawings, mostly related to the Alferakis and De Bottaris.
