News Release

Photographs, watercolor paintings, books, maps, musical scores and beautifully illustrated letters all taken from various Johns Hopkins University library and archival collections, will be on display at the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library Thursday, Feb. 13, through Sunday, April 13, as part of Baltimore's VIVAT! St. Petersburg celebration, a citywide arts festival commemorating the 300th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg.

"The Vivat festival offers a wonderful opportunity for the libraries and archives to showcase Johns Hopkins' rich and varied connections to St. Petersburg," says Winston Tabb, dean of university libraries at Johns Hopkins. "We are particularly pleased to partner with our colleagues at the Pratt Library in presenting this exhibit."

An opening program and reception for the exhibit, Vivat! A Panorama of St. Petersburg from the Johns Hopkins Collections, will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 27, at the library's central branch, 400 Cathedral St. in Baltimore. Speakers will be Dan Todes, professor of the history of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Robert Sirota, director of the university's Peabody Institute.

The exhibit will highlight the cultural, social and intellectual life of 19th and early 20th century St. Petersburg. Leading figures in both cities' musical, diplomatic, medical and scientific communities will be featured in this exhibit of materials from The Archives of the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, The Alan Mason Chesney Archives of The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and The Sheridan Libraries Special Collections and Archives. Highlights of the exhibit include photographs and images depicting the experiences of Daniel Coit Gilman, Johns Hopkins' first president, as a young attache to the American legation in St. Petersburg during the 1850s; Tchaikovsky's visit to the Peabody Institute in 1891; concert programs documenting Baltimore performances by some of St. Petersburg's finest musicians and dancers; and items from the collection of W. Horsley Gantt (1892-1980), a longtime member of the medical faculty. Featured are materials documenting Gantt's experiences from 1922-1923 as a medical officer assigned to the Petrograd unit of the American Relief Administration which brought medical aid and food supplies to residents in the aftermath of the civil war that followed the Bolshevik seizure of power. Also included are materials documenting the period from 1925 to 1929 when Gantt worked with the renowned physiologist Ivan Pavlov at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Petrograd.

The opening reception on Feb. 27 is free and open to the public. For information, call 410-396-5430. Information about additional Johns Hopkins' contributions to VIVAT! St. Petersburg can be found online at http://webapps.jhu.edu/jhuniverse/today/vivat.cfm. General information about Vivat! St. Petersburg is available online at http://www.vivatfest.com/