Master institute 🏫 in New York 🗽 - Biography of Nicholas Roerich, America, Part 18.

The season’s money woes threatened Roerichs’ ambitions. While in New Mexico, they had agreed to work with Sina and Maurice in transforming the Lichtmann Piano Insti­tute into a Master Institute of United Arts, which opened in November 1921—but, lacking funds, seemed unlikely to survive. The institute was to be another School for the Encouragement of the Arts and its guiding principle was the Wagnerian “unit­ed art work,” and it eventually offered class­es in painting, sculpture, handicrafts, architecture, music, drama, and ballet. Students paid a registration fee of $5 and tuition ranging from $7 to $40 per month. The academic staff consisted of Roerich, Sina, Maurice, and Maurice’s sister Esther, plus an assortment of Russian emigres paid on a course-by-course basis. Until money poured into the institute more freely, Roerich impressed upon Sina and Maurice the need to economize by hiring “those teachers who will lecture for free...” Most of the Lichtmanns’ piano students transferred over, and their tuition helped to cover overhead. Still, there were few students to teach at first, and the institute was limping toward an early exit if it failed to generate more income.
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The mission of the Nicholas Roerich Museum is essentially a narrow one: to make available to the public the full range of Roerich’s accomplishments. These, however, are not narrow; they cover the realms of art, science, spirituality, peacemaking, and more. Because Roerich’s activities ranged widely, so do the Museum’s.
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Visit us at Nicholas Roerich Museum 319 West 107th Street New York NY 10025
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