What does the Chukchi walrus tusk amulet have in common with the screen by the Japanese artist Kano Toshun titled “Monkeys Trying to Catch the Reflection of the Moon"? And the answer is that both these items, along with Chinese porcelain, Mongolian sculptures, paintings by Pirosmani and much, much more than we could possibly list are on display in the former Lunins' House on Nikitsky Boulevard in Moscow, today the State Museum of Oriental Art. The People's Commissariat for Education made the decision to create the museum on October 30, 1918. The new museum was given the fancy name Ars Asiatica: cultured people among Bolsheviks would be exterminated later, in the 1930s. And the year of its creation is impressive as well: at the time, the young Soviet government had more pressing problems than new museums. But they got to educating the nation right away. Maybe that is why they won the Civil War?
