Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum

The Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum (also Nizhny Novgorod Art Gallery) is one of the oldest and one of the first museums in Russia open to the public. It was founded at the end of the XIX century in 1894 by decision of the City Duma. The opening of the museum took place on June 25 (old style) in 1896 timed to coincide with the XVI All-Russian Industrial Art Exposition in Nizhny Novgorod. The original collection of the museum first started with graphic cloths, given as gifts by initiators N. A. Koshelev and A. A. Karelin who created the museum, as well as famous Saint Petersburg and Moscow artists I. E. Repin, K. E. Makovsky, and A. P. Ryabushkin. After 1917, nationalized nobility assemblies became the sources of entry for showpieces (Sheremetev, Orlov-Davydov, Abamelek-Lazarev, and others). A large role in organizing the museum assemblies was played by Maksim Gorky, who donated to the museum cloths by N. K. Rerikh, M. B. Nesterov, and B. M. Kustodiev. Today the assembly of the Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum, formed during the length of over one hundred years, totals at around 12 thousand showpieces. It is a rich and diverse collection of domestic paintings, graphics, applied and decorative art, and popular art. Furthermore, the museum preserves an extremely interesting and significant collection of works by Western European craftsmen as well as a small collection of art from Eastern countries. The Russian art collection of the Nizhny Novgorod art museum advantageously stands out from similar collections of other Russian provincial museums due to its massiveness and completeness. It offers the opportunity to consecutively trace the history of national art from ancient Russian icon paintings up to the contemporary productions created during the final years of the XX century. The pride and joy of the museum are the productions of Russian painters F. S. Rokotov, K. P. Brullov, A. K. Savrasova, I. I. Shishkin, I. E. Repin, I. I. Levitan, F. A. Malyavin, K. A. Korovin, V. A. Serova, N. K. Rerikh, B. N. Kustodiev; the works of Russian avant-garde craftsmen: M. F. Larionov, N. S. Goncharova, O. V. Rozanova, K. S. Malevich, V. V. Kandinsky; and productions of contemporary artists. The Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum is situated in the Upper City of Nizhny Novgorod in two buildings, which are themselves monuments of architectural and urban constructions of federal significance: the former Governor building (Kremlin, building 3) built in 1841 and the former mayor building of merchant Dmitry Vasilevich Sirokin (Upper Volgian Embankment, building 3) built in 1916 as part of a project by the brothers Leonid, Victor, and Aleksander Vesnin.
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