MISSISSIPPI WELCOMES RUSSIAN WONDERS.

Byline: Betty Attaway Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

From the hand-carved, parquet floors to the golden figurines, everything about the Mississippi Art Pavilion is fit for a czar or czarina.

"The Palaces of St. Petersburg: Russian Imperial Style Exhibition" opens March 1 and runs through Aug. 31 in Jackson. The transformation of 54,000 square feet of mundane office cubicles to the lavish recreations of five rooms inside the historic palaces of St. Petersburg, Russia, has cost about $8.6 million.

"This will be a visual feast," said Jack Kyle, key organizer of the exhibit. "This is the largest cultural endeavor ever taken in Mississippi. There are more than 600 objects drawn from collections from the palaces of Russia. We couldn't move the palace here, so we did the closest thing by re-creating the rooms."

It is the first time in the United States that palace rooms have been authentically re-created for an exhibit, Kyle said.

"A lot of people have done vignettes, but this is the first time people have been able to walk in the room," he said.

Kyle, who met with representatives of six palaces in Russia in planning the exhibit, decided to re-create five rooms from the Peterhof, Tsarskoje Selo (Catherine's Palace), Gatchina and Pavlovsk palaces. The result is the largest Russian exhibit ever in the United States and the first U.S.-Russia collaborative effort to exhibit outside of Russia.

One of the highlights of the rooms is the intricately floral and geometric-designed floors, which were made by Russian artists and master craftsmen using eight types of imported wood. The floors were then shipped to Jackson in huge crates.

Other recreations include the imperial baldachin, a velvet cloth with spun-gold thread, from the Throne Hall at Gatchina Palace. The final touches of the exhibit are the original furnishings, including furniture, porcelains, clocks, paintings and tapestries that were loaned by the Russian palaces.

In addition to the five re-created rooms, 11 galleries will display a cross-section of objects from the collections of Russian emperors and their families encompassing the reigns of Peter the Great through the last czar, Nicholas II.

Only one item in the exhibit comes from the United States: the Imperial Gatchina Palace Egg, created by the firm of Peter Carl Faberge in 1902.

The egg was a gift from Czar Nicholas II to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorova. It was sold after the Communist Revolution in 1917 and is now displayed in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, which loaned it to the St. Petersburg exhibit. The egg, one of a dozen Faberge creations in the exhibit, is a marvel of intricate work with rows of seed pearls that divide the surface into panels and separate the top and bottom sections. A tambourine, horns, an artist's palette and flaming torches are inside.

The largest object in the exhibit is Alexander II's gold coronation carriage, which is about 9 feet tall and 18 feet long.

On location

Tours of "The Palaces of St. Petersburg" run from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Tickets are $12 for adults, $11 for senior citizens (60 and over) and $3 for youth (kindergarten through 12th grade). Preschoolers are free.

Tickets are available at the pavilion or at any TicketMaster outlet. To order in advance, call [phone]. There is a $2.25 handling fee for each advance order.

For a schedule of events in the Jackson area, contact the Metro Jackson Convention and Visitors Bureau, [phone].

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The Yellow Hall, built in the mid-18th century for Empress Elizabeth, is one of six rooms from Russian palaces re-created for display in the Mississippi Art Pavilion. Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service Box On location (see text)