The Art Museum

32, Lenin Street, Vitebsk

The building of the Art Museum, the branch of the Vitebsk Regional Local Lore Museum, was constructed in 1883 for the district court. For the implementation of the project the architect I. Zalessky and engineer M.Kocherovsky used a part of the famous Zamkovaya Gora on the left bank of the Vitba River. In the ancient times there was duke’s residence, while the trading quarter was inhabited by traders and craftsmen.

When the construction took place, the eleven-meter side-hill was almost all destroyed. The wooden buildings located on the slopes were pulled down. Nowadays, the former name of Lenin Street where the Art Museum is located is forgotten. In the archive documents of 1592 it is called Velikaya Ilemnitskaya, in the name of the village where the street led. Later, the street was called Smolenskaya. Since 1928, it has been Lenin Street, while the building of the former district court has become an essential part of the architectural complex of the centre of Vitebsk.

The building is fundamental and solemn. The façade of the symmetrical two-storey part overlooks the Svobody (Freedom) Square. The central three-storey part stands out. On the top of the composition there’s a decorative wall and a triangular fronton.

At the end of the 19th–beginning of the 20th centuries the building of the district court hosted famous grand balls.

In the Soviet times the building was used by the Military Revolutionary Committee. In the 1920s, there was the Palace of Labour and provincial trade union. Later, it was the location of the Vitebsk Region Communist Party Committee.

In 1992, the Art Museum was opened. Ten years after its opening the building was renovated. The reconstruction concerned the layout of the halls, but the front metal staircase inside the building remained untouched.

The opening of the renovated museum took place on 10 July 2008.

Today its total area is 1668 sq m. The permanent expositions take 858 sq m, and about 110 sq m is occupied by the archives.

The collection of the Art Museum counts over 11 thousand exhibits, presenting Belarusian art of the late 18th – early 20th centuries, including the works by I. Shishkin, I.Repin, I.Kramskoi, V. Perov, A. Kuindzhi, V. Mayakovsky, I.Levitan. Yudel Pen’s collection of 183 pieces is the largest in the world. The museum holdings also include icons, collections of decorative and applied arts, stove tiles produced at the Belarusian plants.

The Vitebsk painters presented over two thousand various works to the museum.

The Art Museum and the International Festival of Arts “Slavianski Bazaar“ are contemporaries. During the first festival edition the Art Museum hosted the exhibition by Yudel Pen (1878–1937), an amazing painter, the teacher of the world-known Marc Chagall.

In the following festival editions the museum presented the exhibition on occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Vitebsk School of Arts, the exhibition of lithographs by Marc Chagall from the Chagall Museum in Nice and Ida Chagall’s private collection, the exhibition by the participants of the Repin International Children Plein-air, contemporary Belarusian and international painters, sculptors, photographers and others.