Inzhenernaya Ulitsa 4
Tel. 595- 4248
Tour office: 314- 3448
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State Russian Museum is the first and largest museum of Russian art. It contains a large collection of Russian paintings, sculptures, works of folk art from different periods of Russian history. State Russian Museum is located in the Mikhaylovskiy Palace that was constructed in 1819- 25 under supervision of architect Carlo Rossi under orders of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich. This Neo- Classical residence was in private possession of various members of Romanov family until the late 19th century. In 1898 Tsar Nicholas II dedicated parts of Mikhaylovskiy Palace to a collection of Russian art that became known as State Russian Museum. Today it contains a huge collection of some of the best examples of Russian artists, sculptures, and etc that are also located in Mikhaylovskiy, Stroganov and Marble Palaces.
On April 13 (25), 1895, Emperor Nicholas II issued a personal
imperial decree "On the establishment of a special institution called
the Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III" and on the presentation for
this purpose of the Mikhailovsky Palace, acquired in the treasury, with
all outbuildings, services and a garden belonging to it ". The
regulation on the museum was approved by the decree of Nicholas II of
February 14 (26), 1897. The following conditions were presented in the
regulation, emphasizing the special status of the museum.
"The
works of living artists are subject to placement for 5 years in the
Museum of the Imperial Academy of Arts and only after this period can be
finally transferred to the Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III, with
the consent and at the choice of the manager thereof."
"Objects
placed in a museum and constituting its property can never be alienated
or transferred to another institution."
"The manager of the museum is
appointed by the highest personal decree and must certainly be a member
of the Imperial House."
The official opening of the museum is March 7
(19), 1898.
Collection
The collection originates from works
received by 1898 from the Academy of Arts (122 paintings), the Hermitage
(80 paintings), the Winter Palace, suburban palaces - Gatchina and
Alexander (95 paintings), as well as those acquired in private
collections. In particular, a large collection of portraiture (several
dozen paintings) came from the heirs of Prince A. B. Lobanov-Rostovsky,
a collection of drawings and watercolors - from Princess M. K. Tenisheva
and others. By the opening of the Russian Museum, the collection
included 445 paintings, 111 sculptures, 981 graphic sheets (drawings,
engravings and watercolors), as well as about 5,000 ancient monuments
(icons and products of ancient Russian arts and crafts).
Further
replenishment of the collection, according to the decree of Emperor
Nicholas II, was to take place through purchases with "funds allocated
for this" and possible donations. During the first ten years of the
museum's existence, its collection has almost doubled.
In the
first decade after the October Revolution of 1917, the collection grew
rapidly thanks to the activities of the State Museum Fund (1921-1928),
which distributed nationalized works of art among museums.
In
1922, a new complex exposition was opened, for the first time
consistently built according to the scientific and historical principle.
For the first time, works of the latest art are presented in it.
In 1924, about 400 paintings were transferred from the Museum of the
Academy of Arts.
In 1925, the museum's collection already had
3,648 paintings.
In 1926, a collection of works was transferred
from the museum at the State Institute of Artistic Culture (GINHUK).
In the early 1930s, the exposition areas were expanded due to the
transfer of the Benois building freed from outside tenants and the Rossi
wing of the Mikhailovsky Palace.
In 1934, the Ethnographic
Department of the Russian Museum became an independent institution - the
State Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR.
In 1941,
in connection with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, most of the
collection (over seven and a half thousand of the most valuable
exhibits) was evacuated to Molotov. The rest of the collection was
removed from the exhibition, packed and hidden in the cellars of the
building. During the war of 1941-1945, not a single museum exhibit was
damaged.
May 9, 1946 - the opening of a new post-war exposition
in the halls of the first floor of the Mikhailovsky Palace. In the
autumn of 1946, an exposition was opened on the second floor of the
Mikhailovsky Palace.
November 8, 1946 - opening of an exposition
of Soviet art in the Benois building.
In the second half of the
1940s, the Benois building and the Mikhailovsky Palace were connected by
a passage, which made it possible to give the exposition consistency and
completeness.
In 1954, after the creation of the Expert
Purchasing Commission of the Russian Museum, the replenishment of the
collections acquired regularity and purposefulness.
In 2004, the
Russian Museum included the Summer Garden with a collection of marble
sculptures (92 exhibits) and buildings - the Summer Palace of Peter I,
the Coffee House, the Tea House, as well as the House of Peter I on
Petrovskaya Embankment.
As of January 1, 2012, the museum's
collection consisted of 407,533 items.
The collection of the
Russian Museum in high resolution can be found on the portal "Virtual
Russian Museum".
In the section of ancient Russian art, icons of the 12th-15th
centuries are widely represented (for example, the Golden Hair Angel,
Our Lady of Tenderness, Dmitry Thessalonica, the Miracle of George about
the Serpent, Boris and Gleb, etc.), works by Andrei Rublev, Dionisy,
Simon Ushakov and other masters. In total, the collection of the Russian
Museum is about 5 thousand icons of the 12th - early 20th centuries.
The most complete is the collection of fine arts of the 18th - the
first half of the 19th centuries, including works by Andrey Matveev,
Ivan Nikitin, Carlo Rastrelli, Fyodor Rokotov, Vladimir Borovikovsky,
Anton Losenko, Dmitry Levitsky, Fedot Shubin, Mikhail Kozlovsky, Ivan
Martos, Semyon Shchedrin, Orest Kiprensky, Alexei Venetsianov, Fyodor
Bruni, Karl Bryullov ("The Last Day of Pompeii", etc.), Pavel Fedotov,
Alexander Ivanov, Kapiton Pavlov and others.
The second half of
the 19th century is represented by the works of artists: Fyodor
Vasiliev, Rostislav Felitsyn, Andrei Goronovich, Evgraf Sorokin, Fyodor
Bronnikov, Ivan Makarov, Vasily Khudyakov, Alexei Chernyshev, Pavel
Rizzoni, Lev Lagorio, Nikolai Losev, Alexei Naumov, Adrian Volkov,
Andrei Popov, Vasily Pukirev, Nikolai Nevrev, Illarion Pryanishnikov,
Leonid Solomatkin, Alexei Savrasov, Alexei Korzukhin, Firs Zhuravlev,
Nikolai Dmitriev-Orenburgsky, Alexander Morozov, Nikolai Koshelev,
Arseny Shurygin, Pavel Chistyakov, Ivan Aivazovsky (The Ninth Wave,
etc.) and others, as well as "The Wanderers": Grigory Myasoedov, Vasily
Perov, Alexei Bogolyubov, Nikolai Yaroshenko ("In the warm regions"),
Konstantin Makovsky, Nikolai Ge, Ivan Shishkin, Ivan Kramskoy, Mikhail
Klodt, Vasily Maksimov, Ilya Repin (" Cossacks”, Barge haulers on the
Volga”, and others), Viktor Vasnetsov (“The Knight at the Crossroads”,
etc.), Vasily Surikov, Nikolai Abutkov and others.
The end of the
19th century - the beginning of the 20th century: Isaac Levitan, Pavel
Trubetskoy, Mikhail Vrubel, Valentin Serov and others, as well as the
works of the masters of the "World of Art": Alexander Benois, Konstantin
Somov, Konstantin Korovin, Boris Kustodiev, Nicholas Roerich, Robert
Bach (performed from life a sculptural portrait of Emperor Alexander
III), artists of the "Blue Rose" and "Jack of Diamonds".
Soviet
art - works by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Vera Mukhina, Sergei Konenkov,
Alexander Deineka ("Defense of Sevastopol"), Arkady Plastov, Alexei
Eremin, Vyacheslav Zagonek, Engels Kozlov, Maya Kopyttseva, Boris
Korneev, Boris Lavrenko, Yevsey Moiseenko, Mikhail Natarevich , Samuel
Nevelstein, Boris Ryauzov, Gleb Savinov, Alexander Samokhvalov, Viktor
Teterin, Nikolai Timkov, Leonid Tkachenko, Mikhail Trufanov, Yuri Tulin,
Vitaly Tyulenev, Pavel Filonov, Boris Shamanov, Dmitry Tsaplin, Ivan
Efimov, Alexei Sotnikov, Vasily Vatagin, Andrey Marz, Alexey Tsvetkov
and others.
The Department of Recent Trends was established in
the late 1980s. One of the tasks of the department is to consolidate
new, non-traditional art forms, new media and technologies in the
practice of museum collecting: installations and assemblages, video art,
photography and photo-based art, and much more. The main task of the
department of the latest trends is to track the most relevant phenomena
of the current artistic process and its reflection in the collection, as
well as to fill in the gaps that exist in the museum collection.
In 2018, the Russian Museum was visited by more than two million people.