Location : STATE RUSSIAN MUSEUM
Saint Petersburg.
The first Russian State Museum of Russian Fine Arts in Russia was founded in 1895 in St. Petersburg by decree of Emperor Nicholas II and opened to visitors in 1898.
The Museum of National Art appeared in St. Petersburg much later than in Moscow, but immediately in state status and in the Grand Ducal Palace. According to the plan of Emperor Alexander III, he was to become a clear embodiment of the Russian idea. According to the «progressive public» — to designate the outstanding role of Russian art in the world. In 1889, the tsar even began to buy paintings of the Wanderers, but did not manage to fully realize his plan, his son Nicholas II had to open the museum.
The building for the museum was chosen perfectly. The project of the Mikhailovsky Palace was completed in 1819 by Karl Ivanovich Rossi. He created almost all the main architectural ensembles that became the hallmarks of St. Petersburg: from Senate Square to Yelagin Palace. As part of the work on the project of the Mikhailovsky Palace, Rossi carefully planned the entire surrounding territory, which was a wasteland. He paved additional streets (Mikhailovskaya and Engineering) and formed the Arts Square, where the main museum building faces today. The reverse side of the palace overlooks the garden of the same name on the banks of the Moika River.
The palace bears the name of Grand Duke Michael. It could also be called the palace of the wife of Prince Elena Pavlovna, whose contribution to the cultural life of the country is difficult to overestimate. It was under the roof of the Mikhailovsky Palace that the ideas of creating the Russian Musical Society and the Conservatory, the founding of the Holy Cross Community of Sisters of Charity (the current Red Cross), the Clinical Institute (now the Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education) were born. Within these walls, plans to abolish serfdom were worked out. As the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, wrote, «the palace of the Grand Duchess has become a center in which a plan for the desired reform has been privately developed.» Thanks to this, Elena Pavlovna in secular circles received a special household name — Princesse la Liberté (Princess Liberty).
After the death of Elena Pavlovna, the palace was inherited by her daughter Catherine, the Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitskaya, and then he went to her children, the Princes of Mecklenburg and the Princess of Saxe-Altenburg. There was a strange situation when the property of the Romanov dynasty was owned by German citizens. Everything changed after the building was redeemed into the treasury for the construction of the Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III here.
According to the original plan, the exposition was to consist of three parts. One was dedicated to the life of the reigning emperor, the other to ethnography and crafts, and only a third of the area was allotted to the fine arts proper. However, the first soon lost its relevance, the second stood out in a separate museum, and the Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III began to replenish its collection not only with painting and sculpture, but also with architectural masterpieces of different eras.
Initially, the exposition was formed from the already existing collection in the Hermitage, as well as from art collections transferred to the museum by Princess Tenisheva and Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, famous collectors of Russian art. In 1917, the museum did not pass over the fate of St. Petersburg streets, palaces and other city-planning objects: the name of the emperor was removed from the name, it was reduced to two words: “Russian Museum”. Oddly enough, the changes taking place in the country only contributed to the replenishment of the collection. Thus, the widespread closure of churches and the nationalization of the property of noblemen entailed the transfer of valuable icons and art objects to the museum funds.
Two years after the October Revolution, the Benoit building appeared in the museum, named after the leader, architect Leonty Pavlovich Benoit. Conceived in 1910–1912 as a pavilion for temporary expositions and exhibitions, in 1932 the building turned into a department of contemporary art of the Russian Museum, and only after the Great Patriotic War it was connected to the building of the Mikhailovsky Palace.
The war, which squeezed Petersburg into a blockade, also affected the collections of the Russian Museum. Thanks to the efforts of a few workers, the assembly was practically not affected. The most valuable part of the collection was evacuated to Perm, more than seven thousand paintings were removed from the palace walls, including such gigantic paintings as “The Last Day of Pompeii” by Bryullov and “Copper Serpent” Bruni — large-scale canvases ranging in size from 20 to 60 square meters. They had to be removed with incredible accuracy, so that not a single fold or damage would form. Part of the collection that remained in the museum was hidden in the basements and vaults, and the sculptural group «Anna Ioannovna with an arapochka» was buried in the museum’s private land. The efforts were not in vain: over the years of the war more than 40 shells, about 100 incendiary bombs, fell into museum territories. The collection returned to the museum in October 1945,
Each building of the State Russian Museum lives a special life. In the baroque Stroganov Palace, you can see recreated interiors of the Elizabethan era. In the strict Marble, built in the era of Catherine II, significant exhibitions of contemporary art are held. The Engineering Castle — a fortress protected by a moat and the Moika and Fontanka rivers — is mainly dedicated to the era of Emperor Paul and is famous for its famous lecture hall. The unique Summer Garden, newly opened after restoration in the spring of 2012, once again proves that nature, framed by the hands of talented architects and sculptors, can become no less a city-planning monument than cold marble and granite.
Over its more than a century of history, the museum has become a vast complex, unparalleled in the country. This is an art collection, and the famous restoration center, and a research institute. The funds of the museum library contain about 170 thousand printed publications. Each year, various collections travel to world museums, and the doors of the «Russian», in turn, open for about 50 temporary exhibitions. Since 1997, the international society Friends of the Russian Museum has been working, bringing together patrons and cultural figures who contribute to the preservation and replenishment of the collections of the famous treasury of Russian art.