Museums in Search of Lost Russia

Photographer Lily Idov is drawn to the aging and dilapidated museums of Moscow. Her photo essay begins with an image of a bearded guard at the Zoological Museum, a classic Soviet science museum that’s hardly changed in the last 30 years. Its enormous, brightly colored rooms house skeletons and jars of small beasts preserved in strong-smelling formaldehyde. Idov also photographed the now-closed Moscow Polytechnic Museum, one of the oldest science museums in the world, which chronicled Russian scientific achievement; as well as the State Darwin Museum, a magnificent biology museum overflowing with stuffed animals in different stages of disarray.