Kyiv Picture Gallery National Museum

Kyiv Picture Gallery National Museum (Національний музей «Київська картинна галерея»; Natsionalnyi muzei “Kyivska kartynna halereia”). One of the largest art museums in Ukraine. It was set up in Kyiv in 1922 out of the nationalized private collections of the Tereshchenko family, dating back to the 1870s. Until 1934 it was known as the Kyiv Picture Gallery. In the 1930s it acquired from the All-Ukrainian Historical Museum the works of Volodymyr Borovykovsky, Dmytro H. Levytsky, Ilia Repin, and Mykola Yaroshenko and collections of Mykola Ge’s and Mikhail Vrubel’s works. From the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) and the Art Cabinet of Kyiv University, it obtained collections of old Kyivan Rus’ art. Known for decades as Kyiv State Museum of Russian Art, in 2013 it was granted a national museum status. It was renamed in 2017 and assumed its present name.

The collection is housed in a building built for Mykola Tereshchenko in 1880 by A. Gun and Vladimir Nikolaev, and extended in 1882 by V. Shreter and V. Nikolaev. Its interior decorations were done by F. Melner. The museum holds over 12,000 artefacts from medieval Kyivan Rus’ icons to 20th-century modernist and socialist-realist art. The exhibits consist of icons dating back to the 13th century, paintings, sculptures, graphic art, porcelain, china, and artistic glass from the 18th and 19th centuries. The museum holds frequent exhibitions to popularize Russian art. Its jubilee exhibitions include the better works of Ukrainian artists who had worked mostly in Russia. It publishes special art catalogues for students.

Sofiia Yaniv

[This article was updated in 2017.]