“Russian America. The Beginning”: an exhibition about how Irkutsk became a gateway to the New World

The Window to Asia department shows fragments of a Steller’s sea cow skeleton and objects from the 18th–19th centuries. Open until 1 March 2027.

On 15 May 2026 the interregional exhibition “Russian America. The Beginning” opened in the Window to Asia department of the Irkutsk Regional Museum of Local History. The project was created in Vladivostok by the V. K. Arseniev Museum of Far Eastern History; in Irkutsk the regional museum, the Shelekhov city museum, the Archive of Foreign Policy (Moscow) and the regional state archive took part. The author of the exhibition is Alexander Bondarev.

The exhibition tells of the exploration of the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, Sakhalin and the Amur region, from Vitus Bering’s expedition in the mid-18th century to the founding of the Russian-American Company in 1799 and the first Russian circumnavigation by Krusenstern and Lisyansky. The exhibits include fragments of the skeleton of the extinct Steller’s sea cow found during Bering’s second expedition, waterproof clothing, household items, hunting tools and jewellery of the indigenous peoples. Irkutsk, in the words of deputy chairman of the regional government Andrei Yuzhakov, is “not just a ‘window to Asia’ but also the gateway to Russian America”. The exhibition runs until 1 March 2027.

Source (in Russian): IrkutskMedia, 17 May 2026.