Ryazan Oblast State Art Museum named after I.P. Pojalostin

The Ryazan Oblast State Art Museum named after I.P. Pojalostin is one of the oldest art museums in Russia, located in Ryazan, a city 196 kilometers southeast of Moscow. Founded in 1913 and opened to the public in 1915, the museum holds approximately 12,000 works spanning Russian and Western European art from the late 15th to the late 20th centuries. Its collections encompass paintings, graphics, sculptures, traditional arts and crafts, and applied arts, with particularly notable strengths in ancient Russian icons, 19th-century Russian painting, Western European works from noble estates in the region, and folk art specific to the Ryazan area. The museum serves as a major cultural institution for the Ryazan Oblast, maintaining exhibition programs, restoration workshops, and scholarly archives.

The museum originated on March 30, 1913, when the Charter of the Society of the Ryazan Art and History Museum named after Professor Ivan Pet夸lostin was registered, with Prince Obolensky approving the document. The initiative came from local enthusiasts including A.A. Kiselev-Kamsky, V.P. Sokolov, and S.A. Pyrsin, who had organized Ryazan's first art exhibition in 1906. The founding society united prominent local artists and intellectuals, and the initial collection was built from donations by Moscow painters combined with items from Ivan Pojalostin's private collection. The museum became municipal property in January 1915 and opened to the public on March 23, 1915, occupying three rooms in the Romanov College building at 24 Seminarskaya Street. Its first catalogue listed 72 items, including approximately fifty works by Russian artists from the early 20th century. In 1918, the institution was incorporated into the Ryazan Governorate local history museum. The Department of Arts obtained its present name in 1938, by which time it occupied the two-story stone building of the Ryazan Consistory inside the Ryazan Kremlin. Since 1980, the museum has resided in the former Ryumin mansion. The museum also maintains branches: Pojalostin's House, a house museum in Solotcha opened in 1992 in the former residence of the engraver, and the Viktor Ivanov and Ryazan Land Art Gallery at 14 Pervomaysky Avenue.

The museum's holdings are organized into several distinct collections that together document the development of visual culture across six centuries. The largest and most prominent collection covers Russian painting, graphics, and sculpture from the 17th through 20th centuries, tracing stylistic mainstreams, artistic movements, and individual personalities. The ancient Russian art collection was assembled primarily through expeditionary work by museum staff in the 1960s and 1970s, supplemented by unique items from the Ryazan Diocesan Archives and the Ryazan Scientific Archive Commission Museum. The Western painting and drawing collection derives largely from works received from former noble estates in Ryazan Governorate, notably those of the Gagarin family. Applied arts encompass furniture, porcelain, glass, and ceramics from Russian and Western manufacturers. The Ryazan traditional arts and crafts collection, also formed through 1960s-1970s expeditions, preserves folk costume, embroidery, ceramics, and toys from one of Russia's oldest centers of traditional folk art. The museum regularly holds exhibitions from its own collections and hosts solo and group exhibitions of contemporary artists, with works from the collection presented at international exhibitions.

The Russian art collection includes paintings by Vladimir Borovikovsky, Alexey Venetsianov, Vasily Tropinin, Alexei Savrasov, Vasily Surikov, Ilya Repin, Konstantin Korovin, Abram Arkhipov, and Filipp Malyavin, whose life and work were connected to Ryazan. Drawings by Aleksander Orłowski, Pyotr Sokolov, Ivan Shishkin, Fyodor Vasilyev, Valentin Serov, Mikhail Vrubel, and Wassily Kandinsky are held, along with works by members of Mir iskusstva and the Blue Rose. Soviet-era sculptors represented include Ivan Shadr, Alexander Kibalnikov, and Yevgeny Vuchetich. The Western collection features one of only two easel works by Giovanni Battista Crosato on public view in Russia, The Sacrifice of Polyxena, plus paintings by Vincenzo Catena, Francesco Guardi, Adriaen van Ostade, Justus van Huysum, Simon Vouet, and Philippe de Champaigne. Watercolors by Giacinto Gigante and Gabriele Carelli represent Western drawing. In applied arts, the museum holds a Dutch carved sideboard from the 17th century and a Russian bureau from the first third of the 19th century, alongside porcelain from the Imperial Porcelain Factory, Francis Gardner's private company, and Prince Yusupov's manufactories, as well as Sèvres and Meissen production. A ceramic statuette by Maria Kojina illustrating Krylov's fable The Speckled Sheep (1946) is noted. The folk art collection features Mikhailov colored embroidery, Skopin ceramic, and traditional clay toys.

Since 1980, the museum has occupied the former Ryumin mansion at 57 Svobody Street. This building was constructed in the classical style for merchant and millionaire Gavriil Vasilievich Ryumin in the first half of the 19th century on land allocated for his state service, on the site of earlier structures. Ryumin personally supervised construction, and the estate became a popular gathering place for Ryazan nobility. The building subsequently served various functions, including a noble boarding house and secular institutions, during which time the original interior layout was lost and rooms were converted to small office spaces. Before 1980, the museum had occupied the Ryazan Consistory building within the Ryazan Kremlin. The Ryumin mansion was restored, reconstructed, and its interior reconfigured when it passed to the museum. The building exemplifies Russian classical architecture, though it has been rebuilt several times over its history. Pojalostin's House, the museum's branch in Solotcha, was built in 1880 according to the owner's own design and features a distinctive mezzanine; it burned three times in the second half of the 20th century but was restored each time.

The Ryazan Oblast State Art Museum named after I.P. Pojalostin is located at 57 Ulitsa Svobody in Ryazan, Russia. The museum operates from 1:00 to 19:00 and is closed on Mondays and the last Friday of each month. As a state regional museum, it functions under public ownership and serves as an important center for preserving and exhibiting artworks in the Ryazan region. The institution offers specialized departments for archives, academic literature, and art restoration work, with professional staff providing visitor assistance. The museum's website is http://artmuseum62.ru/. In addition to the main building, visitors can access the Pojalostin's House branch in Solotcha, opened in 1992, which holds works by the engraver Ivan Pojalostin and photographs dedicated to his life, along with a memorial exhibition in his former office and an exhibition about writer Konstantin Paustovsky. The Viktor Ivanov and Ryazan Land Art Gallery at 14 Pervomaysky Avenue provides additional exhibition space dedicated to the artist and academician Viktor Ivanov.