Lecture by Molly Brunson

Monoliths: Art, Industry, and the Marvelous Objects of the Russian Empire

Thursday, September 25, 2025, 12:00-1:15pm New York Time

Molly Brunson (Yale University)

In this talk Molly Brunson will discuss the very big objects—the massive stone vases, the imposing doors and mantles, the decked-out palace interiors—that came to be associated with the Russian empire during the long nineteenth century, moving from the malachite boom in the Ural Mountains to the decorative excess of the capital and the century’s legendary world’s fairs. By situating these examples from the Russian decorative arts within the history of resource extraction and hardstone mining, industrial development, and global competition, Brunson shows how these marvelous objects leveraged scale to reflect and possibly control the earth-shattering impacts of modern industry.

Molly Brunson is Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University, with a secondary appointment in the Department of the History of Art. She specializes in the literature, visual art, and material culture of the Russian empire and Soviet Union. Her first book Russian Realisms: Literature and Painting, 1840¬–1890 was named the 2017 Best Book in Cultural Studies from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages and translated into Russian in 2022. Brunson is currently working on two books: The Russian Point of View: Perspective and the Birth of Modern Russian Culture and The Underground: Mining and Matter in Russian and Soviet Culture. Brunson has lectured on Russian art and literature at the University of Cambridge, Stanford University, Princeton University, New York University, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the National Portrait Gallery in London, and elsewhere. In 2025 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow.

IMAGE CREDIT: Joseph Nash, The Great Exhibition: Russia, 1851, pencil, watercolour and bodycolour, 33.0 x 48.3 cm. Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 919954