Terrible Times. Beautiful Books

The Adler Collection at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense
A suitcase opens to disclose an astonishing journey. Back in time, we explore two strangely related stories. The first is the personal story of the Adlers: architects and accidental collectors of children’s books. The second is that of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Terrible Times. Beautiful Books. The Adler Collection at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense unlocks the content of that suitcase and, through stories on paper, retraces the outline of a mutable and occasionally thorny period in history, highlighting the strength and importance of children’s books both in the past and today.  

CREDITS
 

Exhibition curated by 
James M. Bradburne, Federica Rossi

 
Direction
Andrey Viazigin

 
Production
Victorina Petrossiants

 
Editing
Elvira Mogilevskaya

 
Narrator
James M. Bradburne

 
Music
Olga Chokseirek

 
Extra contents
Valentina Pagani Donadelli, Andrea Vitale, Barbara Vitale

 
Special thanks to
Susan McQuail, Marijana Dworski, Cristina Barbano, Mario Bevilacqua, Svetlana Družinina, Marc e Emanuela Innaro, Aleksej Judin, Erast Kuznetzov, Roberto Sabelli, Andrej Šiškin, Gerhard Wolf, Aldo Bassetti, in memoriam Giancarla e Luciano Berti, John Bowlt, Miriam Camacho Cabrera, Aldo Coletto, Laura Doran, Giuseppina Di Gangi, Wanny Di Filippo, Maria Goffredo, Alexei Gorbatov, Irina Leninka, Yakov Maršak, Nicoletta Misler, Matthew Owens, Alessandra Quarto, Angelo Rossi, Myroslav Schandrij, Varvara Schklovskaya, Heather Smedberg, Sergei Vinogradov, Kiril Zacharov, Marina Zetti

 
With the support of
Fondazione Allenora, Amici di Brera, Athenaeum, Banca Intesa, Fondazione Berti per le scienze e l’arte, Il Bisonte, Francesco Brioschi, Corraini Edizioni, Ernst May Gesellschaft, University of California San Diego