Ivan Khristenko, Музей "Край Долгоруковский"/Museum "Krai Dolgorukovsky",

this picture and the next five (2017) 
from Livejournal courtesy of Vadim Razumov 

Although the building pictured above has a pleasant appearance, at first sight there is nothing special about it, but looking at the more detailed photo below, one can see that this building is rather special, if only because of the way the façade is decorated in various ways.

This is the façade of a museum in the village of Dolgorukovo, Russia, some 425 kilometers south of Moscow.

This museum has the rather unique feature that -apart from the hull of the building- all parts, structures and decorations have been made single-handedly by its director, Ivan Aleksandrovich Khristenko.

Life and works

Nothing initially indicated that Khristenko would become director of a museum. He was born on September 14, 1930 in the Prikhidki village in the Poltava region (currently part of Ukraine),  graduated in 1957 in law at the Moscow State University and became a successful lawyer, first practicing in Moscow, then in the Ryazan region and eventually in the Lipetsk region.

Khristenko was a convinced communist and he was actively involved in committees and organizations in Lipetsk affiliated with the communist party, like he was a correspondent of the newspaper Path to Communism and a teacher of the district committee of the CPSU.

 tower on the premises of the museum

So when in the mid 1960's the plan arose to create a museum dedicated to the history of Dolgorukovo, where Khristenko lived, he became involved. The museum was formally established on October 14, 1967.

Khristenko was appointed as its director, but since the museum initially was located in just one room of the local CPSU, this in the beginning probably was an activity as volunteer.

In 1979 a building belonging to the CPSU with four rooms and an outside space of 2500 m² (10890 sq ft) was allocated as a new, more spacious housing for the museum and probably this was the moment when Khristenko began to devote himself full time to the further substantive and spacial expansion of the museum.

a bust of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

In terms of design of the space, these developments got a distinctive signature, incomparable with those of other museums. Khristenko began to fill the outdoor space with self-made sculptures and structures, creations he built up with the aid of cement and all kinds of surplus material found on the dump. The interior got all kinds of decorations, often made from paper mache, wall paper, styrofoam and other cheap available (waste) material.

In doing so, it came to a tremendous explosion of creativity, resulting in numerous works of art being added to both the interior and the exterior which in this way together were transformed into an art environment.

left in the picture a scene with

Gorbatsjov and Jeltsin

The history of Dolgorukovo was placed in a broad context and so there were sculptures of important persons in Russian political history, such as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the founder of the USSR, Michael Gorbatsjov, the last president of the USSR and Boris Jeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation.

Prince Dolgorukovo 

The village of Dolgorukovo in former times was property of the Dolgorukovo family. When in 1896 a railway was built, the station was named after the former owners of the village and so the museum also pays attention to this particular relation, as evidenced by, among others, the sculpture above that depicts the founder of the village, Prince Yu.V. Dolgorukovo.

in memory of Russia's estates

Khristenko's interest in the Russian past is also reflected in his attention for country estates. This can be seen in particular with regard to the (in Soviet times destroyed) estate of the brothers Zhemchuzhnikov.

a portrait of Kozma Prutkov
this picture and the next four (early 2018) 

courtesy of Evgenia Gorlova

The brothers Zhemchuzhnikov became especially known for the fictional personality Kozma Prutkov they created together with A.K. Tolstoj. In the middle of the 19th century Prutkov published numerous publications under this pseudonym. Especially his aphorism became well known.

One room of the museum features the brothers Zhemchuzhnikov and Prutkov's aphorisms appear on its walls. Although Prutkov did not exist, the museum just as well has a portrait of him and on the tower in the outdoor space he is -immortalized in a sculpture- looking at the spot where the estate once was located.

The interior of the museum includes 11 rooms and they all have been exuberantly decorated with pillars crowned with friezes, wall decorations, inscriptions or colorful paper mache items.

In some rooms just one specific theme is addressed, like there is room dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. Dolgorukovo was in a war zone and in the early years of the museum inhabitants of the village came donating pieces of war material, found in the area.

Another room is dedicated to the Soviet Five-Year Plans.

In July 2000, when Khrishtenko approached the age of 70, he transferred the management of the museum to his daughter Nadezhda Ivanovna Kryukova. Although over the years his health has declined, he has continued his activities for the museum as an employee and so he remained involved in its policy.

The museum has as small professional staff which is financed by the regional government. On average it is visited yearly by around 4000 people, who don't have to pay an entrance fee.

The financial situation of the museum at the moment is worrying, especially because there are no means to carry out maintenance. Khrishtenko never wanted to accept eventual contributions from funds or other private parties, because in his opinion the financial support should come from the central government. However, Moscow so far has not responded to requests on this matter.

Visitors of the museum often say that it offers surrealistic or modern art. Since the phenomenon art environment in Russia is virtually unknown, it is currently not obvious for Russian researchers to rank the museum within this conceptual framework, which elsewhere in Europe is gradually receiving more attention, accompanied by a growing appreciation for the encountered artworks.

From the perspective of the field of art environments the museum is a unique creation, comparable with some of the most important sites in France, Spain or Italy. It would be regrettable if this museum in the (near) future would cease to exist or would be "normalized".

Documentation

* Article (march 2018) by Evgenia Gorlova with a series of photographs on her website

* Article (dec 2017) by Vadim Razumov, also with a series of photographs on LiveInternet

* Article (june 2012) in regional website Lipetskmedia
* Article (oct 2010) by AAUUMM on LiveInternet with information about and pictures of the site as it was in 2010
* The museum as listed in a website about museums in Russia

Videos
* Video (jan 2013) by regional television NTV (can not be embedded here)
* Video (june 2015) by Evgeny Sokolsky (You Tube, 9'53"), with Ivan Khristenko presenting the site

Ivan Khristenko

Museum "Krai Dolgorukovsky"

Lihachova Street 24

Dolgorukovo, Lipetsk region, Russia

can be visited, no entrance fee (closed on Mondays)

the museum is located in the center of the village, not far from the station

Valery Ermakov, Скульпту а саду та інтер'єру з картинами та скульптурами/Sculpture garden and interior with paintings and sculptures

pictures and video screenshots published here 

with permission of the website Ukrainer.net

In the field of art environments, it happens occasionally that for years a site is only known to the nearest neighbors and remains unnoticed by the general public. And then it can happen that at some moment a creation comes above the radar, as with this art environment in Ukraine.

ensemble with Vakula, a character in a story by Gogol

Life and works

Valery Ermakov, the creator of this art environment, was born in 1938. Already as a youngster he was interested in creative activities, like he -after some instructions of his mother- at age five already decorated bird whistles made from clay. 

However, there was no professional artistic career ahead of him. All his life he has been working as a design engineer. He got married in the 1980's and the couple settled in Poltava, a town of some 300.000 inhabitants in the north-east of Ukraine, located some 340 km east of Kiev.

Greek God Pan

In addition to his job, Ermakov in his free time developed into a self-taught artist, this with the support and encouragement of his wife. He made paintings and sculptures, but, perhaps too impatient to keep up, he attended just a few meetings of a course for amateurs. Eventually he got his information about art from magazines and tutorials.

Ermakov participated in the fair in Sorochinskyi, a famous market in his region and one of the largest in Ukraine with a lot of attention for cultural matters, but he was not inclined to sell his work at a price which, in his opinion, was too low. On the other hand, he would donate his creations to local schools and churches.

In 2007, after Ermakov retired, he and his wife moved to the  community of Panasivka, a very small village with just a couple of houses and without shops.

a goddess (?) with blue hair

Here Ermakov had space and time to create sculptures and paintings and his wife could enjoy her hobby of gardening.

To make sculptures, Ermakov glues small pieces of styrofoam together and processes the raw material just with a knife. He finds his inspiration in the works of the author Nikolai Gogol (who by the way was born in a village in the Poltava region) and also in Greek and Roman mythology. 

Artworks outdoors

The outdoor artworks are partly grouped in a modest sculpture garden on the side of the house (picture above). 

As the other pictures above show, this part includes a sculpture that represents Vakula, a character from a story by Gogol, another one that depicts the Greek mythological character Pan and a third one that depicts a female nude with blue hair, kind of a Greek goddess or a nymph, about whom Ermakov says that he doesn't know who she is....  

Another part of the outdoor creations includes decorations on the front wall of the living house, especially a radiant yellow sun (as in the first picture of this post). There is also a sculpture of a female nude sitting on a pedestal, placed just close to an outside wall of the house.

Artworks indoors

 Above picture gives a impression of the artworks in the living room, a mixture of paintings and sculptures, set up amidst a large number of green plants, which keep alive the memory of his wife who tragically died in 2015.

The character with the bow and the arrow in the corner of the room as in above picture probably is a Cupido, as well as the one in the picture below.

A rather interesting feature of the indoor collection is the sculpture of a lady dressed in a red robe.

Life-size depicted, the woman is at ease in front of a window, in such a way that it seems as if she is part of the household. To my knowledge, in the field of art environments there is only one other self-taught artist with a similar connotation, namely Bogdan Ziętek from Poland.

The Ukraïner project and the trip to Greece

As said, the art environment created by Ermakov from 2007 would have remained unknown if not a specific event had occurred. In his case, it concerned the activities of Ukraïner, a media project by a group of young Ukrainians led by Bogdan Logyvenko to share curious stories about the most distant corners, people, art, and food of Ukraine in order to offer information to the general public to get to know their country better.

A team of Ukraïner visited Ermakov and reported about him in January 2018. Recognizing his great interest in Greece, they started a crowd funding action to offer him a trip to that country. The campaign was successful and in March 2018 the trip took place.

Later in 2018 a video reporting about the trip will be published.

Documentation

* Article Without models (January 20, 2018, in english) on website Ukrainer
* Article How Valery from Panasivka arrived in Greece (March 24, 2018) on website Ukraïner

* Video by Ukraïner (You Tube, 4'52", december 2017), subtitled in english)

Valery Ermakov

Sculpture garden and interior with paintings and sculptures

Panasivka, Poltava region, Ukraine

sculpture garden can be seen from the road

Josué Virgili, La cittá fiorita/The flowered city

 this picture and the next two (undated, probably 1980's)
© Francis David and © LAM from the website 

Habitants Paysagistes, cartographie des maisons et jardins singuliers

Now that in march 2018 the Lille Art Museum, France, has published it's website Habitants Paysagistes, illustrative material has become available with the effect that some new entries may be added to this blog. Like the following note about a by now disappeared art environment in Kremlin-Bicêtre, a community south of Paris, France

Life and works

Josué Virgili (1901-1999) ¹, who created this site, migrated in 1922 from Italy to France where he worked as a marble mason, first in Monaco and later -from 1932 on- in the Paris region.

He liked to write poetry and other texts in Italian and he somehow considered himself a messenger of god with the mission to spread love and brotherhood.

When retired, around 1970 he began transforming exterior and interior of his house in Kremlin-Bicêtre into an art environment.

l

His artistic production in particular consists of a large variety of colorful small-scale objects that almost completely cover floors and walls, such as self-made dolls, vases, small sculptures and other objects, often displayed on a variety of equally self-made pedestals and small tables.

For some creations cement was used and these are often inlaid with pieces of mirror glass, marble or faience, like most exterior and interior floors were also decorated with mosaic in various patterns.

A rather special and characteristic part of Virgili's art includes a series of all kinds of circular creations, often decorated with mosaics or colorfully painted, which evoke associations with or symbolize the sun.

The exterior had various totems, poles with doves or weather vanes on top and other structures such as a towery one as in above picture that is reminiscent of the Eiffel tower.

Some of Virgili's creations in detail

Francis David's pictures of the site as shown above, mainly provide an overview of the site. But it is interesting to look at some details of Virgili's creations,

The picture below, from the website of the ABCD-art brut collection, showing a pedestal/table made by Virgili, gives a good impression of the way Virgili decorated his creations with mosaic and small concrete structures.

Sculpted heads similar to the one that can be seen in the table leg, return in various other table legs and totems that are part of this art environment, as can be seen in the photo by Bruno Montpied below.

picture (1984) by Bruno Montpied, from his weblog

Also rather interesting is the story around Virgili's creation pictured below, a shining sun that has an accompanying inscription, saying LA RACINE fait pousser (the root makes grow).

This creation became the emblem of the french association l'Aracine, presided by Madeleine Lommel, which brought together an important collection of art brut artworks (currently in the Lille Art Museum)

Madeleine Lommel explains in an interview ² with Jeanine Rivais that this emblem was chosen because of the expressiveness of the image and its title (for Virgili faire pousser also meant faire brisquer, which in english is something like to beak, to enrage or to make jealous)

The site has been partially lost, partly preserved

Virgili's art environment doesn't exist anymore. The small items generally are preserved, and have ended up at art dealers, in the collection of l'Aracine or other private collections.

The mosaics and similar decorations on walls and floors probably have gone lost.

Documentation
* Entry about Virgili in website Habitants paysagistes
* Article in Wikipedia
* In his weblog (October 2010) Bruno Montpied reports about a visit he paid in 1984 to Virgili

notes
¹ The date of birth mentioned here is the one as stated in the article in the website Habitants Paysagistes and in the website ABCD-art brut; Wikipedia; mentions 1907 as birth year
² In this interview Madeleine Lommel also explains that l'Aracine means: Les Amis Réunis Autour d'une Création Intemporelle, Novatrice, Essentielle (The Friends Gathered around a Timeless Creation, Innovative, Essential)

Josué Virgili
La cittá fiorita

avenue Charles Gide

Kremlin-Bicêtre, région Île-de-France, France

site doesn't exist anymore

Dmitry Skurikhin, Плакаты на внешних стенах/Posters on exterior walls

this picture and the next one from Facebook

Viewing the picture above, one might assume it represents an art environment of someone from the newest generation of self-taught Russian artists.

And indeed, Alexander Emelyanov in a recent article on the Russian website Sygma  presents above photo next to photos of facteur Cheval's Ideal Palace and of his own creation Aquaduct Tashkent and -establishing a corresponding creative signature between the three creations- he classifies the decorated building as an art environment.

Actually, the decorated building is one of the three supermarkets owned by entrepreneur Dmitry Skurikhin, who in the ever-changing handmade posters gives his opinion on political developments in Russia.

So this site can be considered as an art environment with political messages.

 picture from website Charter97

the text reads: "Dimon got run over. Let’s go after Vovan" 

("Dimon" refers to prime minister Dmitry Medvedev and  

"Vovan" is a humorous reference to Vladimir Putin)

Life and works

Dmitry Shurikin was born on december 1, 1974 in Russko-Vysotskoye, a community in the Leningrad oblast, some 45 km south-west of St Petersburg. He studied engineering at the Baltic State Technical University "Voenmeh" and graduated in 1997.

However, in stead of choosing a technical career, Skurikhin became a businessman when in the late 1990's he bought an abandoned building where he established a supermarket. Currently in and around Russko-Vysotskoye he owns three shops.

The shop with the decorated walls is located in the village of Ropsha. Shurikhin lives with his family in another village in the region. 

picture from Facebook

Skurikhin at home, making a poster 

In 1996 Skurikhin began to manifest himself as someone with political ambitions, clearly expressing his views and not hesitating to criticize those in power. To a van he used to cross the regio visiting his shops, he added stickers with political statements, which sometimes involved a confrontation with the police.

Participating in the 2009 Russko-Vysotskoye local elections, Skurikhin was elected and became a municipal district council member until 2014, a position he held together with nine members from United Russia.

picture from website Charter97

the text reads: "Congratulations to the 61th anniversary

of the death of the Dragon. The dragon died, but his cause lives"

The poster project

In the spring of 2014 Skurikhin began working with posters. At a bus shelter he had improvised in front of his store in Ropsha, he hung a couple of posters dealing with Crimea and one about Stalin as in above picture. That construction was kind of a birthday present for his wife, who works with him as an accountant in the company that manages the three shops owned by the family.

The authorities were not amused and ordered the demolishment of the bus shelter. Skurikhin did this and then went to attach the posters to the exterior wall of the store. He has continued his creative and political activity of decorating the shop to the present day (april 2018). 

 

The local authorities try to obstruct this activity as much as possible. In any case the police will make pictures of the posters. A sea container located near the shop, decorated with posters and graffiti texts by Skurikhin, was removed by the police.

The "pyramids" in front of the shop are anti-tank obstacles, installed by Skurikhin to prevent intrusion of the shop by the police.

 

  picture from Facebook

the text reads "The main thieves down" 

The artistic potential of the posters

Apart from the political content of the posters, which is not taken into account in this weblog, it can be established that the posters in a creative sense have a strong appearance.

This appearance is mainly based on a sober calligraphy with the use of just capitals and the colors red and black, while illustrations are added only very rarely.

The attractive thing about the posters is that it is clear they were made by a non-professional.

All together Skurikhin's work might be seen as a a contemporary combination of folk art and art of propaganda.

picture from news magazine The Village

the text reads "Peace to Ukraine, stop Putin's policies against it"

In the field of art environments in Europe just a few sites are known with posters or poster-like inscriptions at the exterior, but then always in combination with other visual decorations, such as the inscription on the exterior wall of Isravele' site in Palermo, Italy, the movie posters on the exterior wall of Guy Brunet, France or the exterior posters in Joe McKinley's site in Northern Ireland.

So an art environment with just posters on an exterior wall as in Skurikhin's site, might be unique in the field of European art environments.

Documentation
* Skurikhin's Facebook page
* article by Elizaveta Maternaya (december 2017) on website Charta'97
* article Maria Bashmakova (february 2018) on website Novayagazeta
* article Skurikhin art (march 2018) by Alexander Emelyanov on website Syg.ma

Dmitry Skurikhin
Posters on an exterior wall
Ropsha, Leningrad region, Russia
can be seen from the street

Sergey Zharov, музей с железными скульптурами/Museum with iron sculptures

the entrance of the museum

picture from the website of kaluga24.tv

The Russian town of Tarusa, a community of about 9700 inhabitants, around 140 kms south of Moscow, known for some popular museums such as the Tarusa Regional Museum of Local Lore and the Tsvetayevs Family Museum, since 2012 has a new museum with the special feature that it is a private enterprise managed by self-taught outsider artist Sergey Zharov.

  

this picture and the next six: 
screen prints from the video in the documentation

Life and works

Zharov, probably born in the late 1960's or early 1970's, like his mother and grandmother has lived his whole life in Tarusa. After his primary education he went to a carpenter's workshop where he was trained as a carpenter. 

In the 1990's he began his own carpentry company, with a focus on the manufacture of furniture, doors and windows. 

It became his hobby to collect objects that in earlier time were used in daily life and in housekeeping, such as sewing machines, gramophones, classic tv sets, meat grinders, irons, and so on. He would regularly visit the Izmailovo flea market in Moscow.

At some moment, maybe in the early years of 21st century. he also became interested in processing iron in a creative way, using a welding machine. His first creation became a skeleton of a fish, as in above picture.

It turned out to be a successful undertaking and Zharov decided to continue on the chosen path. In the course of the following years he made a large collection of sculptures all made entirely from iron. 

The collection has a variety of personalities in various poses and also a number of animals.

The sculptures are made from parts of surplus devices. Zharov gathers all kinds of iron material such as cylinders, gears and bicycle chains, mostly from companies that demolish cars and other obsolete apparatus.

Once ready, the sculptures would be finished with a special lacquer to protect them from the influence of the weather.

In the terminology of this weblog Zharev can be considered an outsider artist, but he doesn't see himself as an artist, saying that he would like to agree with a friend who characterized him as a seller of good mood.

At a certain moment the collection of both the stuff from the past and that of the iron sculptures had grown to such an extent that - initially jokingly - the idea arose that it deserved a museum.

But Zharov thought: why not. And the museum was established indeed, based in the courtyard and an upper floor of Zharov's property. As said, it opened in 2012.

For Zharov this museum is, in his own words, "a way to introduce guests to the world of small fairy tale fantasies that can come from everyday things".

above two pictures courtesy of website sosensky.info

The museum, which currently attracts some thousand visitors a year, is a welcome addition to the tourist potential of Tarusa.

All-Russian Festival of Metal Sculptures

In the summer of 2016, for the fist time the All-Russian Festival of Metal Sculptures was organized, a project presented on a forum of young people that had won a prize. The festival was held near Zharov's museum and for the occasion the name of the street on which the museum is located was changed to Iron Mile.

 Documentation

* Website of the Museum

* Article (undated) on website klub-kbp.ru, with a series of pictures
* Interview with Sergey Zharov (may 2015) in Kaluga Monthly
* Website Tripadvisor with a large number of pictures
* Video by Anatoly (5'37", You Tube, uploaded march 2016)

Sergey Zharov

Museum with iron sculptures

Schmidt street 11A

Tarusa, Kaluga region, Russia

open for visits, see website

Vladimir and Elena Aleshko, Дом украшен крышками для бутылок/House decorated with bottle caps

 this picture and the next six (2017) courtesy of newspaper TUT.BY 

(photographer Elena Bychkova)

The picture above shows a decorated house in the village of Bril’kov, part of the community of Volozhin in Belarus. At first glance it seems that we are dealing here with frescoes, but that is not the case, these decorations have been created by using caps from plastic bottles.

Life and works

This is a rather young art environment. The project was begun in the midst of 2014 after Elena Aleshko with a grandson was browsing a book about special architecture and was impressed by a house decorated with bottle caps.

She talked about this with her husband Vladimir Aleshko, who was retired, and together they decided to try to realize such a decoration themselves.

A pilot project consisting of making a decoration with two swans (still present on the front side, see first photo) proved successful and from that moment on the life of the couple was completely dominated by the further decoration of house and yard.

Each of the two had a clear role. Elena sought and selected examples and made the designs. Up close it is easy to see that a variety of scenes has been carried out in a cross-stitch pattern as is usual in embroidery. Vladimir would take care of the assembly and eventual construction works, such as the construction of a summer house to realize more exhibition space.

In preparing the addition of a new scene, first a drawing is made at actual size, which on test is inlaid with caps. If the result pleases, the creation will be applied to the appointed spot.

In the summer of 2017, after the Aleshko couple had been working on the project for some three years, the decorations altogether covered an area of about 100 m² and it was estimated that some 100,000 caps had been processed.

These caps are only partially derived from their own household. Vladimir Aleshko gets part of the material from a nearby waste processing company that recycles plastic bottles without using the caps.

Various themes can be distinguished in the decorations.

A variety of animals has been depicted and then a lot of attention is paid to cartoon characters and heroes from well-known Russian television series.

Sport is another important theme. 

As can be seen in the picture below, one of the walls has references to the World Hockey Championship (Minsk 2014), the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi (2014) and the football World Cup which will be held in Russia in the course of 2018.

Documentation

* Elena Bychkova, article (July 2017) in newspaper TUT.BY (Minsk, Belarus)

* In the summer of 2017 the international Peace Run came past the house of the Aleshko couple, which was reported on their website

* You Tube has a video (June 2017, 38'37") of limited quality (it may be a recording of a tv broadcast)

Vladimir and Elena Aleshko

House decorated with bottle caps

Bril'kov, Volozhin, Belarus

site can be seen from the street

Anatoly Vladimirovich Zhdan, зоопарк/zoo

this picture and the next six courtesy of Olga Likhacheva

(website RusNomad)

The storks pictured above are part of a sculpture garden in the  capacity of a zoo located in the middle of a residential area in the Belarusian city of Minsk.

Life and works

Born in 1940 or 1941, Anatoly Zhdan became a gas and electric welder, a job he had until his retirement around 2005. 

One day when retired, he and his wife Nikolaeva (who passed away early 2013) made a trip to the recreation area near the reservoir of Volchkovichi (Ptich), about sixteen kilometers south-west of Minsk. It so happened that during that trip he saw two self-made storks.

This inspired him to make such a couple himself. The result was certainly successful and Zhdan felt motivated to continue making sculptures of animals.

So these two storks marked the beginning of a project that started around 2008 In the following years it would result in a large variety of animals placed together in a part of a public garden near Zhdan's house. Currently (early 2018) the site includes over a hundred creations.

As basic material Zhdan uses polystyrene, occasionally supplemented with an iron frame or some wood for stability.

Polystyrene is a lightweight plastic that is widely used as packaging material during transport of refrigerators and similar household appliances. It is easy to work with a knife and objects made with this material are not so sensitive to weather influences.

Anatoly Zhdan is regularly provided with excess polystyrene packaging by inhabitants of Minsk

The zoo currently holds a lively collection of large variety of animals, like all sorts of birds such as parrots, cranes, pelicans and owls, various predators such as tigers and panthers, and of course zebras, panda bears, and so on.

In short, the livestock that one usually can see in a zoo.

Zhdan's art environment generally is appreciated by the people living around. It is reported that the site hardly is affected by vandalism, although two storks have been stolen....

As the video below shows the site was on TV.  It also got the attention of touristic website Ru-nomad and other touristic websites (see documentation).

Documentation

* Article (january 2018) on website Rus-nomad
* Article ( may 2017) by El Marachi on website Travelphoto.club

* Article (april 2017) on website CTV, with a variety of pictures
* Article (june 2014) on website WhereMinsk

* Article (october 2012) on website City Dog

* Video by Belarusian TV (CTVBY) (You Tube, 6'11", april 2017)

Anatoly Vladmirovich Zhdan
Zoo

st. Sedykh, 30 Minsk, Belarus 
situated in a public park in a residential area