Rumyantsev Museum

The Rumyantsev Museum was a major public museum and library in Russia, originating from the personal collection of Count Nikolay Rumyantsev (1754-1826). Established first in St. Petersburg in 1828 and opened to the public in 1831, it was relocated to Moscow in 1861, where it became the city's first public museum. The institution played a central role in Russian cultural and intellectual life throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. After the Russian Revolution, the museum was formally dissolved between 1924 and 1927 due to space and financial constraints. Its vast collections were distributed among multiple state institutions, while its library formed the nucleus of what is now the Russian State Library.

Following Count Nikolay Rumyantsev's death in 1826, his brother Count Sergei Rumyantsev fulfilled Nikolay's wish to make his collections accessible to society. A decree establishing the museum was signed on March 22, 1828, and the collection was gifted to the government. The museum opened on May 28, 1831, in the Rumyantsev mansion in St. Petersburg, initially allowing public access one day a week and reserving the remaining days for scholars. From 1845, the museum was affiliated with the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg, but maintenance difficulties led Prince Vladimir Odoevsky to suggest transferring the institution to Moscow. In 1861, the Council of Ministers approved the move, and in May 1862, Emperor Alexander II approved the regulations founding the Moscow Public Museum and Rumyantsev Museum. The museum underwent four name changes by 1917, including Imperial Moscow and Rumyantsev Museum. After the October Revolution, nationalization campaigns expanded the holdings to 2.7 million items by 1920. In 1921, the museum and library were administratively separated, and by 1924, the government decreed the museum's closure, distributing its collections among other institutions.

The museum's core consisted of Count Nikolay Rumyantsev's personal library and historical collection, which he amassed with the help of employees and collaborators like Friedrich von Adelung, Alexander Vostokov, and Eugene Bolkhovitinov. The library contained approximately 28,000 to 29,000 volumes, including books and manuscripts from the twelfth to nineteenth centuries, incunabula, and ecclesiastical books. Rumyantsev funded expeditions and sent agents across Russia and the world to acquire historical artifacts, items from Russian voyages, and antiquities from places such as the Museum of Antiquities in Vilnius. Upon relocation to Moscow, the collection was merged with items from Moscow University and roughly 200 paintings and over 20,000 prints transferred from the Hermitage Museum. The museum was organized into several departments, including fine arts and antiquities, Christian antiquities, numismatics, and ethnography. The Dashkov Museum, established after the All-Russian Ethnographic Exhibition of 1867, displayed items collected by Russian travelers like Yuri Lisyansky and Ivan Krusenstern. By 1900, mineralogical and zoological collections had been transferred to Moscow University, leaving five main departments.

Among the most significant additions to the museum was Alexander Ivanov's magnum opus, The Appearance of Christ before the People, donated by Emperor Alexander II for the museum's opening in Moscow. The library held major historical manuscripts, including the Archangel Gospel. The museum's collections were widely utilized by prominent intellectuals, including Dmitri Mendeleev, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Vladimir Lenin. Over the years, the museum acquired significant collections of Western European painting, classical antiquities, and a large icon collection. Following the 1917 revolution, the museum absorbed numerous confiscated private collections, though a collection of Western European paintings was transferred to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1922.

The museum originated in the Rumyantsev mansion at 44 English Embankment in St. Petersburg, a classical style building purchased by Count Nikolay in 1802. To convert the house into a museum, an architect added a twelve-column portico built up from the first floor in the mid-1830s. A pediment was added with a high relief by Ivan Martos depicting Apollo Musagetes on Parnassus accompanied by the nine muses and their mother Mnemosyne. The pediment was engraved with Count Nikolay's words, From the State Chancellor Count Rumyantsev for the good enlightenment. In Moscow, the museum was housed in the Pashkov House near the Kremlin on Volkhonka Street, a palace built between 1784 and 1787 by architect Vasili Bazhenov. As the collections expanded, a second building was constructed next to the Pashkov House shortly after the turn of the century specifically to house the painting collection.

The original St. Petersburg museum opened to all estates without an admission fee. The former Rumyantsev mansion in St. Petersburg was sold in 1863, underwent modifications by successive owners including Zinaida Beauharnais, and from 1938 housed the State Museum of the History of Saint Petersburg. In Moscow, the museum's library remained in the Pashkov House after the museum's dissolution. In 1924, weeks after Lenin's death, the library was reorganized as the Lenin Library, which became the Russian State Library in 1992. The remaining holdings were distributed to various institutions: Russian art went to the Tretyakov Gallery, old masters and antiquities formed the nucleus of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the Dashkov Museum ethnographic collection was incorporated into the Museum of the Peoples of the USSR, and other holdings went to the State Museum of Oriental Art.