This project began as a collaboration between Dr. Julie A. Buckler from Harvard University and Dr. Julia Chadaga from Macalester College. In the summer of 2016, we carried out extensive research at several sites in Moscow, Russia, most prominently the Vernisazh open-air marketplace. We conducted interviews and gathered field notes, photographs, artifacts, and archival data. In the summer of 2017, we began to create the website together with Anna Ivanov, currently a doctoral student at Harvard. Dr. Aisling Quigley of Macalester College has been invaluable as our website developer. Tam Perlman, Brooke Schmolke, and Eleanor McGrath assisted with digitization and other technical matters. We are also very grateful to Dr. Cassandra Hartblay of the University of Toronto, who provided helpful fieldwork advice during our Moscow research trip; Bade Turgut, who made professional photographs of our objects; Ankush Trivedi, who developed the initial version of our website and conducted research; Mani Chadaga, who prototyped a key structural feature of our exhibits; and Lucien O’Brien, who assisted with finding sources and visual materials.

This is a work in progress. For our initial collection, we have selected a range of objects found at the Vernisazh market in northeastern Moscow. We plan to expand the site to include more items from the Vernisazh in the future.