On December 13, 2017, the memorial day of Nicholas Roerich, the Sverdlovsk V. Krapivin Regional Library for Children and Youth hosted the opening ceremony of the exhibition "Nicholas Roerich – Messenger of Culture and Beauty". This exhibition is part of the International Exhibition Project "The Roerich Pact. History and Modernity". Designed and prepared for exposition by the International Roerichs Center (Moscow), it is aimed at popularizing the peacemaking ideas of Nicholas Roerich for protecting the world cultural heritage.
The initiator and author of the project "The Roerich Pact. History and Modernity" is Mrs. Shaposhnikova, the General Director of the N.K. Roerich Public Museum. According to her, the main goal of the project is to consolidate the efforts of the international community in defense of culture and peace on the basis of the main anti-war idea of ​​the Roerich Pact - "Peace through Culture". Since 2012, the exhibition "The Roerich Pact. History and Modernity” has been held in 18 countries and in lots of Russian cities and towns.
The exhibition "Nicholas Roerich - The Messenger of Culture and Beauty" is telling about the international movement in the name of preserving culture and the complexities of creating the Pact, as well as showing unique documents, photographs, books, information stands, and banners. The exhibition also includes photographs reflecting the modern world, in which many monuments of world culture and history are still vulnerable and defenseless, despite the existing laws and conventions.
Exhibition organizers are: the International Roerichs Center, the Yekaterinburg Theater for Young Spectator, the V.Krapivin Sverdlovsk Regional Library for Children and Youth, and the Ural Department of the International League for the Protection of Culture. Representatives of these organizations made a welcoming speech at the opening of the exhibition. Yulia Averina, President of the Ural-Siberian Federation of UNESCO Associations, Centers and Clubs, emphasized the particular relevance of the Roerich Pact nowadays. She reminded that the provisions of the Pact made the basis for the ideas of the UNESCO established in 1945 for the protection of cultural property, and the International Convention, adopted in Hague in May 1954. The visitors got acquainted with the multifaceted creativity of Nicholas Roerich, a Russian artist, thinker, scientist and traveler, an outstanding figure of the national and world culture.
The V. Krapivin Regional Library is not only one –of-a-kind collection of books, but also a children and youth culture center, which is open to all comers fond of reading and respecting the cultural traditions of Russia.
Nicholas Roerich emphasized the educational significance of the Pact, noting that this Treaty was not in the declarations, but in the form, as he said, of the educational law: "The pact is needed for the protection of cultural treasures... as an educational law, which will educate the younger generation from the first school days with noble ideas about preserving the true values ​​of the entire mankind” (Nicholas Roerich, “On Guard of Peace”).
The exhibition is running at the Sverdlovsk V. Krapivin Regional Library for Children and Youth from 13 December 2017 to 13 February 2018.
The Roerich International Center is located at the address 3/5, Maly Znamensky Lane, next to Kropotkinskaya metro station, Moscow.