Review by Choice Review
The State Hermitage in St. Petersburg is known as one of the world's premier museums. In collaboration with the museum of the Russian Academy of Arts, the Hermitage provided a wide range of items for an exhibition sponsored by the Monaco Grimaldi Forum. This curious array includes icons, paintings, various bejeweled objects, and a few 18th-century architectural models. The lavish exhibition book, however, is something of a mess, not only because of the lack of focus in the exhibit itself but also because of a text cobbled together from a pastiche of primitive historical narrative and unimaginative description. Problems with readability are exacerbated by an English text translated from French, much of which was in turn translated from Russian. Each stage of transmission has increased the dense thicket of leaden prose. The photographic reproductions are on Skira's high technical level, but the list of objects, while competent, also suffers from translation absurdities. The text has no notes, and the concluding bibliography, which might have aided those in search of greater depth, is an unhelpful mix of absurdly specialized works and popularizations. This is a book for looking, not reading. ^BSumming Up: Not recommended. W. C. Brumfield Tulane University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
