Icons: Old Believers and Their World
A living tradition between faith, resistance, and visual intensity
From February 27 to August 30, 2026, the Icon Museum and Study Center, in collaboration with the Oleg Kushnirskiy Collection, presents Icons: Old Believers and Their World - a major exhibition devoted to one of the most resilient, internally complex, and visually rigorous traditions in Russian religious culture.
More than an art historical survey, the exhibition unfolds as an encounter with a worldview forged through spiritual conviction, cultural resistance, and visual discipline. The project invites viewers to consider Old Believer icons not merely as devotional images, but as sites where theology, aesthetics, and lived history intersect. Here, icon painting emerges as a form of cultural survival - a language capable of preserving belief, memory, and communal identity across centuries of rupture and transformation.
More than an art historical survey, the exhibition unfolds as an encounter with a worldview forged through spiritual conviction, cultural resistance, and visual discipline. The project invites viewers to consider Old Believer icons not merely as devotional images, but as sites where theology, aesthetics, and lived history intersect. Here, icon painting emerges as a form of cultural survival - a language capable of preserving belief, memory, and communal identity across centuries of rupture and transformation.
SCHISM AND CONTINUTY: THE ETHICS OF REFUSAL
The Old Believers emerged in the mid-seventeenth century following the schism within the Russian Orthodox Church triggered by the reforms of Patriarch Nikon. For those who rejected the reforms, fidelity to tradition was inseparable from spiritual integrity. Their refusal resulted in persecution, exile, and long-term marginalization.
Yet this refusal was not simply oppositional. It was generative.
Cut off from official institutions, Old Believer communities developed parallel systems of worship, transmission, and artistic production. Icons played a central role in this process - functioning not only as objects of devotion, but as repositories of theological precision, collective memory, and ethical order. The exhibition situates icon painting within this broader framework of lived belief, emphasizing that these works were never intended as autonomous artworks, but as instruments of continuity and care.
Yet this refusal was not simply oppositional. It was generative.
Cut off from official institutions, Old Believer communities developed parallel systems of worship, transmission, and artistic production. Icons played a central role in this process - functioning not only as objects of devotion, but as repositories of theological precision, collective memory, and ethical order. The exhibition situates icon painting within this broader framework of lived belief, emphasizing that these works were never intended as autonomous artworks, but as instruments of continuity and care.
VISUAL INTENSITY AND THEOLOGICAL PRECISION
Old Believer icons are marked by an unmistakable visual density. Complex compositions, saturated chromatic palettes, finely articulated gestures, and meticulous detail produce images that resist quick consumption. They demand slowness and sustained attention.
This intensity is not ornamental. It reflects a theological commitment to accuracy, clarity, and vigilance. Painters adhered rigorously to inherited iconographic models, often preserving medieval forms long after they were abandoned elsewhere, while simultaneously refining technique and material execution. The result is a visual language that balances restraint and richness - austere at first glance, yet increasingly expressive over time.
The exhibition foregrounds this paradox, positioning icon painting as a discipline of attention rather than a spectacle.
This intensity is not ornamental. It reflects a theological commitment to accuracy, clarity, and vigilance. Painters adhered rigorously to inherited iconographic models, often preserving medieval forms long after they were abandoned elsewhere, while simultaneously refining technique and material execution. The result is a visual language that balances restraint and richness - austere at first glance, yet increasingly expressive over time.
The exhibition foregrounds this paradox, positioning icon painting as a discipline of attention rather than a spectacle.
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN COLLECTIONS
At the core of the exhibition are more than thirty icons from the distinguished collection of Oleg Kushnirskiy, presented in dialogue with rarely exhibited works from the museum’s permanent holdings. Together, these works trace both continuity and variation within Old Believer icon painting from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.
Seen side by side, the icons reveal subtle regional distinctions, workshop practices, and shifts in emphasis - without ever abandoning their foundational principles. Rather than narrating a linear stylistic evolution, the exhibition reveals a network of practices bound by shared ethics yet responsive to local conditions and historical circumstance.
Seen side by side, the icons reveal subtle regional distinctions, workshop practices, and shifts in emphasis - without ever abandoning their foundational principles. Rather than narrating a linear stylistic evolution, the exhibition reveals a network of practices bound by shared ethics yet responsive to local conditions and historical circumstance.
Oleg Kushnirskiy
Oleg Kushnirskiy is a collector of Russian icons and a recognized expert in the field. His collection, which he started in the United States in the 1990s, includes items from the late 17th to the early 19th centuries. Many of his icons are from the Vladimir region's icon-painting villages, including Palekh, Mstyora, and Kholuy. Others come from the Old Believer communities in Guslitsy and Vetka and various workshops in central Russia.
COLLECTING, STEWARSHIP, RESPONSIBILITY
Collaboration with the Kushnirskiy collection introduces an additional and crucial dimension: the ethics of collecting sacred art. Private collectors have played a significant role in preserving Old Believer icons, particularly during periods when these works were neglected or suppressed. At the same time, collecting raises questions of access, care, and interpretation.
By situating private holdings within a public, scholarly framework, the exhibition invites reflection on stewardship as an ethical practice - one grounded in responsibility to history, belief, and future audiences.
By situating private holdings within a public, scholarly framework, the exhibition invites reflection on stewardship as an ethical practice - one grounded in responsibility to history, belief, and future audiences.
Ilya Kushnirskiy
Ilya Kushnirskiy is the director of the Oleg Kushnirskiy Russian Icon Collection. He is actively involved in publishing and educational initiatives related to the collection. One of his primary goals is to establish partnerships with art institutions and engage with a wider expert community. In line with these efforts, the first comprehensive catalog of the collection was released in April 2023 and presented at the Mikhail Abramov Museum of Russian Icon (Moscow), a private museum with a well-established reputation both in Russia and internationally.
CURATORIAL METHODOLOGY: KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT CLOSURE
Curated by Dr. Justin Wilson, Associate Professor of Medieval Art at Yale University, in collaboration with Elliot Mackin, the project combines academic rigor with curatorial clarity.
Rather than imposing a singular narrative, the exhibition embraces multiplicity. Icons are approached simultaneously as theological statements, historical documents, aesthetic achievements, and social artifacts - without collapsing these dimensions into a definitive interpretation. Meaning emerges through attention, duration, and encounter.
Rather than imposing a singular narrative, the exhibition embraces multiplicity. Icons are approached simultaneously as theological statements, historical documents, aesthetic achievements, and social artifacts - without collapsing these dimensions into a definitive interpretation. Meaning emerges through attention, duration, and encounter.
- Dr. Justin WilsonDr. Justin Wilson brings to the exhibition a rare combination of academic depth and curatorial insight. A historian of Byzantine and early Slavic art, Willson earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University and has worked as curator at the Icon Museum and Study Center, where he organized thematic explorations of iconography and early visual culture. His forthcoming monograph The Moods of Early Russian Art (University of Chicago Press, 2026) and editorial projects on late Byzantine visual culture reflect his broad research interests across medieval media and aesthetic theory.
- Elliot MackinAssociate Curator and Study Center Manager at the Icon Museum and Study Center, combines rigorous scholarship with public programming and educational leadership. A Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, Mackin’s research focuses on Byzantine religious art and its psychological and cultural resonances. In addition to his work on the museum’s exhibitions, he has participated in prestigious fellowships in medieval and Byzantine art studies, including at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
AN INTERNATIONAL PLATFORM FOR DIALOGUE
The opening on February 26 will bring together leading scholars and curators in the field of icon studies, including Andrea Myers Achi (Curator of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA), Irina Shalina (State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg), Natalia Komashko (State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow), Lutz Rickelt (icons specialist and conservator, Recklinghausen, Germany), Konstanze Runge (icons specialist, Berlin, Germany), Liesbeth van Es (independent curator and researcher, the Netherlands), Wendy Salmond (Professor, Chapman University, California).
Their participation positions the exhibition as a site of international exchange and sustained scholarly conversation.
Their participation positions the exhibition as a site of international exchange and sustained scholarly conversation.
The opening will also mark the beginning of a documentary project devoted to Oleg Kushnirskiy, filmed by Academy Award-nominated producer Lauren Beck together with interdisciplinary artist Billy Gerard Frank, a participant in the 58th Venice Biennale. The film extends the exhibition’s inquiry beyond the museum, examining how personal histories and ethical decisions shape contemporary engagement with sacred art.
ICONS AS SOCIAL MEMORY
One of the exhibition’s central propositions is that Old Believer icons function as social memory. They register experiences of exile, discipline, and care, transforming restriction into precision and isolation into inward intensity. In this sense, the icons speak not only to a specific religious community, but to broader questions of cultural survival and resilience.
Study Day: extending the field
On February 28, the museum will host a Study Day featuring a lecture by Peter de Simone of Utica University, alongside presentations by Dr. Justin Wilson, Elliot Mackin, and Ilya Kushnirsky, as well as guided access to the museum’s expanding collection.
Icons: Old Believers and Their World ultimately reframes Old Believer icon painting as a living legacy - one that continues to shape how we think about tradition, belief, and the power of images. By privileging attentiveness over spectacle, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter icons not as distant remnants of the past, but as images that continue to inform ways of seeing, knowing, and inhabiting the world.
In a time when images circulate at unprecedented speed and meaning is often flattened by overexposure, Icons: Old Believers and Their World insists on another tempo. It reminds us that images can still demand responsibility, patience, and ethical engagement - that looking can be a form of practice rather than consumption.
Old Believer icons do not seek visibility in the contemporary sense. They do not aim to persuade, impress, or perform relevance. Instead, they endure. They hold a line across centuries, preserving a way of seeing in which faith, form, and community remain inseparable. Their power lies precisely in this refusal to adapt to the logic of immediacy.
By bringing these works into a contemporary institutional and scholarly framework, the exhibition does not resolve their contradictions or translate them into a single narrative. It allows them to remain difficult, dense, and uncompromising. In doing so, it offers a rare space to reflect on what it means for an image to carry memory, belief, and responsibility over time.
Ultimately, this exhibition is not only about Old Believer icons. It is about continuity as an active choice, about tradition as a living ethical position, and about the possibility of attention as a form of resistance in the present.
Old Believer icons do not seek visibility in the contemporary sense. They do not aim to persuade, impress, or perform relevance. Instead, they endure. They hold a line across centuries, preserving a way of seeing in which faith, form, and community remain inseparable. Their power lies precisely in this refusal to adapt to the logic of immediacy.
By bringing these works into a contemporary institutional and scholarly framework, the exhibition does not resolve their contradictions or translate them into a single narrative. It allows them to remain difficult, dense, and uncompromising. In doing so, it offers a rare space to reflect on what it means for an image to carry memory, belief, and responsibility over time.
Ultimately, this exhibition is not only about Old Believer icons. It is about continuity as an active choice, about tradition as a living ethical position, and about the possibility of attention as a form of resistance in the present.
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