The museum’s collection contains more than fifty works by brilliant masters of European painting from the 15th to the early 20th centuries, including Auguste Renoir, El Greco and other artists. In a separate room the central exhibit of the museum takes pride of place: Konstantin Makovsky’s The Proclamation of Minin. At almost seven by six metres, this is the largest painting on a historical theme in Russian art, and you can even take a virtual tour of it in parallel.
The main artefacts on show at the museum are the luxurious halls themselves and the historical inhabitants of one of the most beautiful buildings in the city: the Rukavishnikov estate, a former merchant’s palace in the style of an Italian palazzo, magnificently decorated with elegant Baroque stucco, paintings and statues.
The Governor’s House in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin houses the region’s most extensive collection of Russian art, from ancient iconography to artworks from the late 19th century. Among them there are some real masterpieces — Vasnetsov’s The Magic Carpet, Bruillov’s Guessing Svetlana, and Russian Venus by Boris Kustodiev.
The first museum in Russia dedicated to the history of photography is located in the building where the famous 19th-20th century photographers Andrei Karelin and Maxim Dmitriev lived and worked. In addition to temporary exhibition programmes, the museum features historical exhibitions with photographs by the pioneers of photographic art, as well as various pieces of equipment: Soviet-era exhibits, a photoplasticon, a pinhole camera, and a mirror room.
Russia’s avant-garde artists, from symbolists to supremacists, have a separate museum space where you can see the works of Kazimir Malevich, Vasily Kandinsky, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Olga Rozanova and other geniuses of rebellious art from the early 20th century.
The exhibition of the renovated museum of the history of GAZ (the Gorky Automobile Plant) tells the story of the factory from its foundation in 1929 to the present day. The museum is based on a collection of cars produced in different periods, for example, the legendary Chaika and Volga, but alongside them there are many interactive areas equipped with touch screens and VR technology.
Kashirin’s House is the place where the future writer spent his childhood. Authentic interiors and furnishings dating back to the 19th century have been preserved in this space, including grandfather Kashirin’s chest and unique stove tiles, while in the courtyard you can find a wonderful sculpture of the young Alyosha Peshkov by Andrey Kikin.
A museum with a unique collection of ancient equipment and tools collated by the Nizhny Novgorod collector Vyacheslav Khurtin. Here you will find factory machinery, musical equipment, examples of transport and household items — around two thousand exhibits in total, many of which are still in full working condition.
The Peshkovs' last apartment in Nizhny Novgorod, where they lived from 1902 to 1904, and an important centre of social and cultural life of their time: among others, Fyodor Chaliapin and Leonid Andreev have stayed here. The authentic setting of the apartment museum houses an extensive collection of personal belongings of the writer and his family, such as a desk, manuscripts, and Japanese netsuke carvings.
