How the details of this bust revealed its subject—a forgotten world leader

"It’s a great mystery: who he is, who made it."

"It was a great mystery: who he is, who made it."

Curator Wolfram Koeppe on a sculpture of Alexander Danilovich Menshikov by an unknown artist.

Explore this object:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/208538

Throughout 2013, The Met invited curators from across the Museum to each talk about one artwork that changed the way they see the world.

Photography by Mark Morosse

Rights & Permissions
No 2: The Old Castle (II vechio castello) and No 4: Bydlo (A Polish Ox-cart)
from Pictures from an Exhibition by Musorgsky played by Nikolai Demidenko
courtesy of Hyperion Records Ltd, London (www.hyperion-records.co.uk)

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Contributors

Wolfram Koeppe
Marina Kellen French Senior Curator, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

A small wooden carved box featuring figures and a tree in relief.
The author of After Sappho offers a queer feminist reading of Eve and the serpent, reimagining sin as likeness, desire, and bodies transcending gender and species.
Selby Wynn Schwartz
January 9
A close-up detail of a painted face rendered in muted green, blue, and gray tones.
Author Leena Krohn reflects on Helene Schjerfbeck’s portrait of Sigrid Nyberg.
Leena Krohn
December 18, 2025
Black woman wearing all black, standing in front of mannequins dressed in blue, yellow and beige.
Video

Superfine Artist Tanda Francis, shares her inspiration behind the design of the custom mannequins used in the Superfine: Tailoring Black Style exhibition.

October 23, 2025
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Alexander Danilovich Menshikov (1673–1729), Unknown Artist, Swiss, Austrian, or German, active Russia ca. 1703–4, Red pine (pinus sylvestris), with wrought-iron clips, Russian, St. Petersburg
Unknown
probably shortly before 1704