World Beauty Day has been celebrated for 30 years, but not everyone knows about this holiday. It was established by the International Committee for Aesthetics and Cosmetology CIDESCO (Comité International D'Esthétique Et De Cosmétologie) back in 1995, and since then, this holiday has been celebrated annually around the world on September 9. However, it appeared in Russia a little later, in 1999.

Mankind has been debating what can be considered beautiful and what cannot, since the first humans appeared on the planet. Standards change over the centuries and vary greatly depending on the country and continent. The question of defining human beauty, so to speak, was raised as far back as ancient times. This is reflected in the folklore of ancient civilisations, and each stage of society development has seen the emergence of new ideals: slender Egyptian women with regular features, athletic Greek women with large faces, petite Chinese women with their small feet, medieval European modesty and virtue, and so on...

In a philosophical understanding, beauty is often considered as the quality of an object that evokes admiration and aesthetic pleasure. But what one person considers beautiful, another may not appreciate at all. Personal perception may depend on taste, experience, and cultural traditions. In art, beauty is expressed through creativity, originality of interpretation, and emotional connection.

On World Beauty Day, it is appropriate to recall one of the recent exhibitions in the museum, "Beauty in the eye of the Beholder." The author of the expression is the Irish writer Margaret Wolf Hungerford (1855-1897). The phrase first appeared in her novel “Molly Bawn”, published in 1878.
In the modern context, this phrase emphasizes:
–  individuality of perception of beauty;
–  relativity of aesthetic assessments;
–  connection between a person's inner world and his perception of the surrounding reality.

Recalling the exhibition ‘Beauty in the Eyes of the Beholder,’ we invite you to watch a video about exhibition  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” that was held in the museum “Collection” recently. It is posted in the Video excursions sequence “Walking through the Museum”.

The exhibition brought together unique sculptures and postcards from the museum Collection Repository and is dedicated to the creative dialogue between French and Russian sculptors of the second half of the 19^th – early 20^th centuries.

Art items by Mathurin Moreau (1822-1912), Antonin Mercié (1845-1916), Emmanuel Villanis (1858-1914) and Godefroid Devreese (1861-1941) were the centrepiece of the exhibition. The works of French academicians presented in the exposition were complemented by the sculptures of talented Russian artisans: Matvei Chizhov (1838-1916), Maria Dillon (1858-1932) and Naum Aronson (1872-1943).
The creative biographies of these underestimated sculptors provide a new perspective on the socio-economic aspects of Franco-Russian artistic contacts: differences in the programmes and structure of studies at the academies, details of the organisation of boarding trips, and the peculiarities of collecting and patronage.

Postcards of the late 19^th century with the images of sculptures and city views presented in the exhibition reveal these aspects in a new way.