Museum of Prints and Drawings

About museum

A unique museum that brings the possibility, in the depths of the Urals, to encounter works by world-class artists: Rubens and Rembrandt, van Dyck and Dürer, Lucas van Leyden and Holbein, Goya and Piranesi, Repin and Serov, and many other outstanding European and Russian masters of the past — representatives of the Italian, German, Dutch, Flemish, English, Russian and other schools of art of the 16th–20th centuries. To make this a reality, many years ago it was decided to collect graphic art in Irbit, primarily its printed, editioned form — the engraving, in which each impression from the author's plate is a priceless original. Thus engraving for many years became the main object of collecting, and the museum in Irbit became the only specialized museum of graphic art in the country and one of the rarest in the world. The museum opened in 2014 in the Trading Row of the Irbit Fair — a restored and reconstructed architectural monument of regional significance dating from the last quarter of the 19th century. It contains 26 exhibition halls connected enfilade over two floors, where the permanent exhibitions "Masters of European Art of the 16th–20th Centuries" and "Russian and Soviet Art of the 18th–20th Centuries" are on display. Another hall is called the "Terracotta" Hall. Like the upper vestibule, it is decorated in the spirit of high Greek classicism. Many events take place in this hall, including as part of the annual museum festival "White Nights of Irbit": concerts, creative meetings and other activities.