Dr. Mark Konecny is Associate Director and Curator of the archives and library of the Institute of Modern Russian Culture, a unique collection of twentieth century books, art, and cultural artifacts. His area of expertise is the interdisciplinary study of Russian and European culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He concentrates on the varied milieu of folk and popular theater as well as cabaret and the Imperial theater of the time as it relates to performance of the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, especially the Futurist movement within the context of the larger movement of the European avant garde. Recently, he has been involved in talks with the Vrubel Museum of Art (Omsk), the Altai State University (Barnaul) and the Biisk State Technical University (Biisk) for the establishment of an exchange program. He works closely with Siberian scholars on various projects involving the art, culture, and literature of Altai and Western Siberia. He has co-authored, with John Bowlt, a volume on Nikolai Khardzhiev, the noted collector of the Russian avant-garde, for publication by the Palace Editions entitled Nikolai Khardzhiev, A Legacy Regained.
In April, 2002, Dr. Konecny curated the exhibition, “The Beastiarium of the Russian Cabaret: Flying Mice and Blue Birds, Black Cats and Stray Dogs”at the Doheny Library, USC. This exhibition, drawing upon the collections of the IMRC, will present a visual history of Russian cabaret in Moscow and St. Petersburg and in immigration. His article, “Blue Birds and Black Cats, Russian Cabaret” appeared in the Journal Teatr. His coedited monograph written with John Bowlt , Nikolai Khardzhiev, A Legacy Regained (St. Petersburg: Palace Editions) appeared in January of this year. He wrote the introduction for the almanac Futurist Studies, Nicholas Rzhevsky (ed.) (Stony Brook, 2002). In May he gave a paper on movement in the intimate theater for the “Palaia Dance Project” in Tuscany (co-organized by the University of Naples, Italy). In Omsk he was Co-organizer and Chair, Vrubel Museum Conference on Russia and the West, June 23, 2002 and he was one of the organizers of a conference on Siberia and the West at the All-Siberia Humanities Conference at the Altai State University in Barnaul June 15, 2003. He is the co-editor of a catalog of the works of Victor Moll, a Siberian artist who worked in California with Richard Neutra. He will be the guest editor of a special issue of the IMRC journal, Experiment, publishing the proceedings of the Palaia Dance Project.

Dr. Konecny lecturing in the Institute of Modern Russian Culture.