Togliatti Museum of Fine Art, Russia

Togliatti Museum of Fine Art aims to consolidate its collection of contemporary art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and to preserve its existing holdings of postwar art, namely Soviet art of the 1970s and 1980s and Russian art of the 1990s. The basis of the collection are works which were donated to the museum by the Directorate of Exhibitions of the Union of Artists of the USSR and the Republican Center for Art Exhibitions and Promotion of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR. Today, the collection is supplemented thanks to gifts from artists.

The museum was opened in 1987 as a branch of the Kuibyshev Museum of Fine Art, to mark the 250th anniversary of Stavropol/Togliatti. In January 2013, the Department of Contemporary Art was established to popularize contemporary art among Togliatti residents. The museum’s holdings number around 10,000 works of painting, graphic art, sculpture, decorative art, and applied art. Artists include Eranui Aslamazyan, Lev Tabenkin, Dmitry Nalbandyan, Nikolai Brandt, Maxim Kantor, and Mikhail Konchalovsky. The collection of works on paper includes etchings by Stanislav Nikireev, autolithographs by Emmanuil Bernshtein, and engravings by Myud Mechev.

The Department of Contemporary Art works closely with international artists. Up until the end of 2018, in collaboration with the municipal project Italian Park, the museum organized the exhibitions Art Doesn’t Smell (Italian Beach on the River Volga, 2017) and Medusa Turns Us into Art (former dancehall Pyatak, 2017), the party-market Summer Harvest (former dancehall Pyatak, 2017), and the international exhibition Autopia: Views from the Present (Department of Contemporary Art, 2018). Department staff read lectures on artists and trends in contemporary art. The department is a space for young Togliatti artists to show their work. The group exhibitions What Should an Artist Talk About (2016, 2018), Viewnosti (2016), and Possible/Impossible (2017) presented works by over 40 artists.