Poltava Art Museum

The Poltava Art Museum (Ukrainian: Полтавський художній музей) is a public art gallery in Poltava, Ukraine, that holds works of native and foreign art alongside a significant ethnographic collection. Founded in 1919, it ranks among the notable regional museums of Ukraine, distinguished by its origins in a major artist's bequest and by the severe losses it suffered during the Second World War, followed by decades of rebuilding. The museum now operates from a purpose-adapted gallery building on Frunze Street, presenting chronologically arranged exhibitions of Western European, Ukrainian, and Russian art.

The museum's collection began in 1917 when Nikolai Yaroshenko, a painter associated with the Peredvizhniki (Itinerants), donated his art collection to his native Poltava. This gift comprised 100 paintings and 23 sketchbooks by Yaroshenko himself, plus works by fellow Itinerants including Ivan Shishkin, Vasily Polenov, Vladimir Makovsky, Ilya Repin, and Vasily Maksimov. The institution opened to the public on April 27, 1919, founded by Mikhail Rudynsky, who later became a prominent Ukrainian archaeologist and museologist. Rudy, ky originally named it "The Museum of Arts," though it functioned officially as an art gallery rather than a full museum at first. Its establishment followed the creation of the Poltava region's Historic and Artistic Monuments Protection Committee, which transferred artistic objects from nationalized estates of the Kochubey, Galagan, Kapnist, and Repnin families into public ownership. The museum initially occupied a mansion built in 1912 to designs by architect Aleshin at 11 Spasskaya Street. Within eighteen months it became an art department of the Local History Museum, and from 1934, after proposals to liquidate it, it was relocated to the Local History Museum building where it occupied nine ground-floor rooms. On March 7, 1939, the Council of People's Commissars granted it independent status as a regional art museum. By the eve of the Second World War, the collection had grown to about 30,000 pieces. During the Nazi occupation, nearly all objects on display were destroyed or lost; only evacuated treasures survived, and museum records were also destroyed. The losses included major Western European paintings by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Peter Paul Rubens, Melchior d'Hondecoeter, Adriaen van Ostade, and Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun, plus Ukrainian works from the 17th, 18th centuries and significant Russian art. The museum resumed operations in November 1944 while Poltava was still in ruins. In 1951 it returned to its original restored building, and staff worked to rebuild the collection, which then numbered over 9,000 pieces including 4,187 wartime survivors. However, the hastily repaired building remained in poor technical condition, and by 2000 the City Council had resolved to move the museum to the Art Gallery building on Frunze Street.

The museum's holdings span Western European, Ukrainian, and Russian art across multiple media including painting, sculpture, porcelain, and furniture. The collection is chronologically arranged in exhibition suites. Western European art occupies one wing, featuring paintings, sculpture, and porcelain. Ukrainian and Russian art, along with church utensils from the 17th, 18th centuries, sculpture, and furniture, occupies the other. Two dedicated rooms house the Yaroshenko collection. The museum also maintains a significant ethnographic collection as part of its holdings. Post-war rebuilding expanded the collection substantially from its wartime nadir, though it has not recovered its pre-war scale of approximately 30,000 objects.

The Yaroshenko bequest forms the institutional core, with two rooms devoted to his works. Highlights include his self-portrait paired with that of his wife, Caucasian landscapes, portraits of contemporaries, and studies for his major compositions. Western European holdings include works by Lucas Cranach the Younger, Van Ravesteyn, Clara Peeters, Melchior d'Hondecoeter, Marcello Bacciarelli, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Francesco Guardi. Ukrainian and Russian artists represented include Isaak Levitan, Ilya Repin, Ivan Shishkin, Konstantin Makovsky, and others. The pre-war collection had included major Western European masters now lost, among them Tiepolo, Rubens, and Vigée-Le Brun. The church utensils collection from the 17th, 18th centuries also represents a significant historical component.

The museum's first home was the 1912 mansion of landowner Bolyubash at 11 Spasskaya Street, designed by architect Aleshin in a quiet corner of the city. After wartime damage and post-war repairs, this building proved technically unsound, prompting relocation. The museum now occupies the Art Gallery building on Frunze Street, where it utilizes two separate suites of rooms on the ground floor and has access to a large exhibition room that enables large-scale temporary exhibitions. This relocation allowed the museum to expand its public programming and better display its collection.

The Poltava Art Museum is located in Poltava, Poltava Oblast, Ukraine, at its Frunze Street building. It operates as a public institution with a website at https://www.gallery.pl.ua/. The museum's present role emphasizes public access and education, using its large exhibition spaces to mount periodic large-scale art exhibitions that allow citizens to engage with works from the permanent collection and promote art more broadly in the community. A virtual tour of the museum interior is available online.