Nizhniy Tagil State Museum of Fine Arts

On September 30, 1944, the Regional Picture Gallery opened in the building of the former Pervomaisky Club in Nizhny Tagil and was renamed the Nizhny Tagil State Museum of Fine Arts in 1945. The museum’s collection is based on works of Russian art of the eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, donated from the collections of the Department of Arts under the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR, the State Russian Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery, and Nizhny Tagil’s Local Lore Museum.

Today, the collection contains more than 10,000 items, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, decorative and applied art, and works by contemporary artists. It features artworks by Ivan Aivazovsky, Vladimir Borovikovsky, Igor Grabar, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Konstantin Korovin, Ivan Kramskoy, Isaac Levitan, Ilya Repin, Olga Rozanova, Zinaida Serebryakova, Vasily Tropinin, Robert Falk, Mikhail Shemyakin, and Alexandra Exter. A significant part of the collection is made up of works by artists from the Urals, primarily Nizhny Tagil, such as Evgeny Bortnikov, Pyotr Bortnov, Leonid Vavrzhenchik, Evgeny Vagin, Mikhail Distergeft, Leonid Zudov, Viktor Mogilevich, and Evgeny Sedukhin.

An important place is occupied by the section of decorative and applied art, with its collection of the traditional Ural craft, the Tagil hand-painted tray. One of the most significant works in the museum’s collection is The Holy Family, attributed to Raphael Santi. The current trend in building the museum involves the development of collections of individual artists .

The museum is actively involved in restoration, focusing on new acquisitions. The restorers’ work with monographic collections formed the basis of the program Returned Name, which includes four projects: Pavel Golubyatnikov, Mikhail Shemyakin, Alexey Konstantinov, and Felix Lembersky.

The Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts was one of the first museums in Russia to organize city exhibitions of children’s art, beginning in 1967. The museum’s website features virtual displays, created thanks to grants from the Vladimir Potanin Foundation and the Ministry of Culture of Sverdlovsk Region. Since 2006, the museum has operated a Virtual Branch of the State Russian Museum.

Around the millennium, the museum became a platform for regional readings entitled Contemporary Art: Trends, History, Development Prospects (1999) and the international open air seminar Ecology of Art in the Industrial Landscape (2001). In 1997 the museum implemented the project Pavel Golubyatnikov: A Student of Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin, resulting, among other events, in the exhibition The Primordial Light of Salathiel. Light Painting in the Work of Pavel Golubyatnikov (2012). In 2010, 2015, and 2017, the museum hosted projects within the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art.

Research Department: +7 (3435) 25-24-29; Mass Department: +7 (3435) 25-26-47; http://virtual.artmnt.ru/; http://histories.artmnt.ru/