Krasnoturyinsk Local History Museum

About museum

Museum activity in Krasnoturyinsk dates back to 1894, when Evgraf Stepanovich Fedorov, head of geological surveys, and Aleksandr Andreevich Auerbach, chief administrator of the Bogoslovsky mining district, founded a geological institution (museum). The museum developed as a result of detailed geological studies of the district carried out in 1894–1899 under the direction of E.S. Fedorov and V.V. Nikitin. It was the first practical geological museum in Russia created to consolidate all materials on the geological structure of the Bogoslovsky mining district. Materials from fieldwork on the general survey of the BGO area, special surveys, exploration work at operating mines and prospects, etc., flowed here. Mineralogical cabinets housed samples of rocks and minerals and their thin sections; a special archival (fireproof) room held cartographic materials and sample research results. The museum set directions for further searches and prospecting of mineral resources. However, already in 1898, at the proposal (and in the presence) of the Perm governor D.G. Arsenyev, the museum was opened to visitors. In 1899 the board of the Bogoslovsky mining district officially named the museum the "Fedorov Geological Museum." The development of museology in Krasnoturyinsk resumed in the 1950s. Residents decided to commemorate their famous countryman, radio inventor Alexander Stepanovich Popov. On October 8, 1952, the Krasnoturyinsk Executive Committee of the City Council of Workers' Deputies adopted a decision "On commemorating the memory of the inventor of the radio A.S. Popov in his homeland in the city of Krasnoturyinsk": to petition the Sverdlovsk Regional Executive Committee to open a museum of A.S. Popov in the house where he spent his childhood years from 1859 to 1867 and to erect a monument to A.S. Popov on the square named after him. For assistance in staffing the museum collections they turned to Leningrad and to the scientist's daughter — Ekaterina Alexandrovna Popova-Kyandskaya. The exhibition was assembled directly by Ekaterina Alexandrovna Popova-Kyandskaya and her daughter, the scientist's granddaughter, Ekaterina Georgievna Kyandskaya-Popova. On November 7, 1957, on the 40th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the first exhibition of the future museum was opened. By order of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR (No. 404 of 11.07.1959) the museum was made state and received the status of the A.S. Popov Memorial Museum. 1977 marked a new milestone in the history of the Krasnoturyinsk Local History Museum. The Bogoslovsky Aluminum Plant built a special building to house the historical exhibition. The Bogoslovsky Mining Administration erected a five-story residential building at the intersection of Popov and Karpinsky streets. The first floor of the building, facing Popov Street, was designed as an exhibition hall. The exhibition hall opened in 1977. Since then, Krasnoturyinsk residents and visitors have been able to view art exhibitions from Moscow, Leningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Sverdlovsk, Izhevsk and other cities of the country and Sverdlovsk Region. The exhibition hall hosts city children's drawing exhibitions, amateur artists' shows, and exhibitions by teachers and students of the arts college and art school. The museum's main exhibition is the historical display. The history department's exhibition was opened for the 70th anniversary of Soviet power. Artists from the Leningrad Painting and Decorative Arts Combine were involved in the artistic design and arrangement of the exhibition. The author of the project and concept of the history department's exhibition was A.F. Khodko. All city enterprises participated in the museum's arrangement. Special credit goes to the CPSU city committee secretary Valery Vasilyevich Plastinin, who organized matters so that the entire city took part in creating the historical exhibition. On June 17, 1988, the historical department's exhibition was opened. It presents the full history of the development of the Turyinsky Mines and Krasnoturyinsk, the formation of the mining and metallurgical industry: the Turyinsky copper mines, the Bogoslovsky Mining Administration, the Bogoslovsky Aluminum Plant, the prospectors' artel "Yuzhno-Zaozersky" and other enterprises. Education, healthcare and culture are widely represented. Participants and heroes of the Civil War, the Great Patriotic War and undeclared wars are shown. The exposition pays considerable attention to the multinational and multiconfessional composition of the local population. A special place is given to the Krasnoturyinsk native, the "father of Russian geology," the first elected president of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences and the first president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Aleksandr Petrovich Karpinsky. His great-granddaughter, Olga Alexandrovna Tolmacheva, actively helped create the scholar's collection. Few museums in the region and country can boast an "Open Storage" department. Numerous collections of household items of Turyinsky Mines — Krasnoturyinsk residents from the 19th–20th centuries are located there. The staff of the Municipal Budgetary Cultural Institution "Krasnoturyinsk Local History Museum" and the city's local historians continue to work on the development of museology in Krasnoturyinsk.