Collection of Objects of the Asian Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the MAE RAS

The history of collecting is one of the most important and little-studied areas of museum science. The article is devoted to the history of the arrival to the Imperial Academy of Sciences of a large collection of Chinese objects acquired in Beijing in 1841 by the bailiff of the 12th Russian Ecclesiastical Mission N. I. Lyubimov. The history of collecting and distributing these items between the academic and other scientific institutions of St. Petersburg turned out to be very complex and confusing. Only thanks to surviving archival materials was it possible to determine the collector of these items and the circumstances of their receipt by the MAE RAS. We analyzed documents from the personal archive of N. I. Lyubimov — a diary, a notebook, lists of items brought from China. Materials from the official correspondence of the Asian Department with the bailiff regarding the dispatch of the 12th composition of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission to Beijing and the purchase of items for scientific institutions were considered as well. The study of the above-mentioned materials also tells about the peculiarities of the system of gathering museum collections in the first half of the 19th century and about the role played by the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the selection of items to replenish the funds of the Ethnographic Museum and other academic institutions.