Boris Sokolov, born in Moscow, Russia, in 1959. Ph.D. from Moscow Lomonosov State University. Associate Professor of Art History at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow and Scientific Editor of Zhivaja Starina Ethnographic Review.
During my stay at NIAS I worked on two topics: European popular prints and comparative garden history. The first involved extensive museum and library work, as well as meetings with ethnologists and a presentation of the topic at the Meertens-Instituut, Amsterdam. One of the results was the international project on the “World Upside Down” as represented in different European countries, to be continued in the coming years. Now I am fully prepared to write on relations between Russian and Western (Dutch, German, Flemish, and French) folk imagery, to develop my former Ph.D. topic on the Russian loubok prints. My second topic, garden studies – a delicate matter, the very framework of which has to be discussed amongst (still rare) specialists, has a well-established tradition in the Netherlands. The meetings with garden and architectural historians were important, as well as field trips to the
existing Dutch gardens. The amount of the new data and visual resources I have collected will help to develop my teaching courses leading ultimately to the book on comparative garden history. The research period will also prove useful for my next project, the conference “Gardens of Arts” and a special exhibition at the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum in Moscow in 2000.