Stavropol Regional Museum of Fine Arts

About museum

The Stavropol Regional Museum of Fine Arts was established in December 1961 and opened to visitors in November 1962. The initiative to create the museum came from the Board of the Stavropol branch of the Union of Artists of the RSFSR and the art historian Boris Albertovich Bendik. The museum is located in the historic part of the city and occupies three buildings joined into a single ensemble, which are federal architectural monuments. Formerly these were merchants' mansions built on the former Aleksandrovskaya Street (now Dzerzhinskogo Street) in the late 1870s — early 20th century. The art museum is the only one in the krai that houses the largest art collection, numbering about 25 thousand original works of Russian and foreign art from the 16th–21st centuries. The museum has formed auxiliary, reproduction and archival collections, as well as a collection of art photography. The exhibition allows one to trace the development of art and folk creativity in the krai over many centuries; the collections cover history from the 5th century BC to the 1990s. The museum displays objects related to the cultures of Japan and China, as well as a collection of icon painting of Ancient Rus'.