A conversation with the Roerich Museum New York, where East and West meet—exploring synthesis, legacy, and the quest for unity.
Interior staircase at the Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York. Photo: M. Mobengo, March 2026
A Path Gathering What Is Scattered
MURIELLE MOBENGO:
DMITRY POPOV, You are a curator from Russia, living and working in New York; a translator who brought the Brahma Sutra and the Bhagavad Gita from Sanskrit into Russian; a collector of contemporary Native American art rooted in ancient tradition; a writer who illustrates his own stories.
Revue Révolution’s inquiry, inspired by Yogic philosophy, has long centered on the possibility of reuniting East and West, tradition and contemporary expression, the steward and the creator. Discovering your work at the Nicholas Roerich Museum, I felt I was encountering that possibility made flesh.
This synthesis of roles—curator, philosopher, translator, writer, artist—is itself a kind of Roerich legacy in motion. Before we speak of the museum, may I ask: how did this path reveal itself to you? Was it a conscious effort to integrate these seemingly separate vocations, or did they simply refuse to remain separate?
DMITRY POPOV:
When it comes to choosing my life path—creative or professional—I have never made strictly deliberate decisions or tried to follow a logically constructed plan. I have simply followed what life offered me, in accordance with the call of my heart. By some remarkable stroke of fortune, these different paths and professions gradually wove themselves into a single fabric, where everything turned out to be connected with everything else.
The ability to work diligently when necessary, and to wait patiently when necessary, did not come at once.
In my youth, I passionately tried to write prose and poetry. But when I saw the poverty of what came from my pen, I abandoned the effort in deep disappointment, convinced that I lacked talent. Yet after living for more than half a century—after gathering a vast store of knowledge, thoughts, and feelings within the soul—I suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, discovered the ability to write novels, short stories, and poetry.
As soon as I graduated from university, I went directly to my favorite museum and asked for a job. I was turned down, and life took me elsewhere. But fifteen years later, that same museum offered me a position. I accepted, with all the consequences of becoming a curator.
In high school, I was deeply interested in books, though I never imagined it as a profession. Then one day a man approached me with a proposal for partnership. He had financial means and managerial skill; he needed someone with knowledge and creative potential. Together, we formed a wonderful team and published an excellent library of books on the spiritual culture of humanity for Russian-language readers.
As a young researcher of Nicholas Roerich’s legacy, I met and became friends with the director of the Nicholas Roerich Museum. As soon as the Iron Curtain fell between East and West, I was invited to visit. The moment I arrived, I felt at home—but I said nothing, because by then I had already learned the value of patience. Twenty years later, I was invited to become its curator, and I accepted without hesitation.
In my own experience, life gives us certain abilities and inner inclinations first, but not always the opportunities to realize them immediately. It becomes our art to sense where effort is required, and where waiting is required—whether for a decade or more. Yet it is precisely through this complex creative process that we discover the happiness of true self-realization.
Growing the Silent Oasis
I visit the Nicholas Roerich Museum often. In a city of relentless pace and noise, it is an oasis of beauty, silence, and depth—the kind of place New Yorkers are proud to claim, yet secretly wish to keep for themselves. It is welcoming, warm, rich in contemplation and inspiring stories, and utterly unlike the monumental institutions a few blocks away.
What does it take, day after day, to preserve that quality? Not only the paintings and archives, but the atmosphere itself—the feeling that one has stepped out of time and into a realm where the spirit can breathe. What does a day in your life at the Roerich Museum actually look like? Not the official portrait, but the quieter one: the hidden hours, the decisions, the encounters with objects and texts that no one sees.
Dmitry Popov:
Yes, once again you have touched upon the mysteries that unfold within cultural institutions and within the hearts of those who work in them. This is true of museum curators, publishing editors, and many others. Visitors and readers see only the final result. Some often feel that things somehow happen as they should, almost by themselves, and that the curator or editor is simply the one who allows the process to unfold and, at best, does not interfere with it too much.
Another reaction I often witness comes from the worker who helps us carry out changes in the collection. His commentary is almost ceremonial in its repetition:
“Well, you’ve redone it again. Last time you said it was good. Now you say it is good again. Later you will change it once more anyway…”
He delivers this each time with complete sincerity and the bewilderment of a man confronting one of the eternal mysteries. Why improve what was already good? Why does “finished” never remain finished? In his own way, he asks one of the deepest curatorial questions.
And yet we see the results of our labor in the thoughts and feelings expressed by visitors. Through them, we know our efforts have not been in vain. I always try to learn whether people notice our work, and it turns out they notice everything: changes in the structure and internal logic of the exhibition, the appearance of new works and interpretive materials, redesigned interiors, a new lighting system. None of it is wasted. That is what warms our hearts and souls.
Any practical result visible to the public is only the tip of the iceberg, supported by a far greater mass of work hidden beneath the surface.
How does this process unfold in daily life? Where does it begin, what sustains it, how does it take form? Frankly, for me it remains a kind of mystery—a living mystery.
It is inseparable from constant and careful study of the subject; from unceasing reflection; from meditative contemplation of the whole body of material; from testing ideas through practical combinations—something akin to Hermann Hesse’s Glass Bead Game—and from the discoveries, or recognitions of error, that follow. For me, it is a continuous flow with no clear boundaries or fixed rules.
A thought may trouble me before sleep, and then, while taking a shower the next morning, a possible answer suddenly appears. During the day, I test that solution—or set it aside for further reflection.
In the morning, the mind is open: to new information, new searches, new ideas. What exactly will arrive? Who can know in advance? And that is wonderful. Otherwise, life would become routine.
New information, reflection, hypotheses, verification, conclusions. New tasks, familiar actions, the torments of creativity, hopes, failures, happy discoveries.
All of it is woven into a mysterious enigma. I have tried to describe it to you, though I fear I have done so imperfectly.
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