The Russian Museum is the world's largest museum of Russian art. First paintings for its collection were donated by the Hermitage, Academy of Fine Arts and various royal palaces.
Since then the collection has been growing very quickly. Nowadays, the Russian Museum's vast collections are displayed at four different locations in downtown St. Petersburg, all within a short walking distance from each other: the Mikhailovsky Palace (main building of the museum), the Mikhailovsky Castle, the Marble Palace and the Stroganov Palace.
The collection of the Russian Museum numbers about 400,000 works and covers the entire history of Russian fine art from the tenth century to the present day. It reflects virtually every form and genre of art in Russia, including a unique collection of Old Russian icons, works of painting, graphic art and sculpture, decorative and applied art, folk art and numismatics, as well as the world's finest collection of Russian avant-garde.
One of the best characteristics of the Russian Museum is that it is organized in a clear chronological progression, thus providing a very good picture of the major developments in the history of Russian art.
Here you will see works by Levitsky, Venetzianov, Brullov, Aivazovsky, Repin, Vrubel, Shagal, Kandinsky, Malevich and many others.
The Russian Museum today is a unique depository of artistic treasures, a famous restoration centre, an authoritative institute of academic research, one of the major cultural and educational centres, research and methodological centre of art museums of the Russian Federation, overseeing activities of 260 art museums of Russia.
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