Minsk Art Museum

(State Art Museum of the Byelorussian SSR; until 1957, the Picture Gallery of the Byelorussian SSR), the largest collection of Byelorussian fine and decorative applied art.

Founded in 1939, the museum was pillaged by the fascist German aggressors during the occupation of Minsk (1941–44). The museum was reopened in 1945, after collections of art works had been established. The museum includes a department of Byelorussian art, which houses wood sculpture of the 16th-18th centuries, icon paintings of the 16th-18th centuries, and works by the Soviet painters I. O. Akhremchik, V. V. Volkov, la. M. Kruger, lu. M. Pen, M. A. Savitskii, and V. K. Tsvirko and by the sculptors Z. I. Azgur, A. O. Bembel’, and A. K. Gleboy. Among the holdings of the department of Russian art of the 18th-20th centuries is a collection of I. T. Khrutskii’s works, as well as works by D. G. Levitskii, I. E. Repin, V. A. Serov, I. I. Levitan, and N. K. Rerikh, and works by Soviet artists such as V. K. Bialynitskii-Birulia, S. V. Gerasimov, P. P. Konchalovskii, and G. G. Nisskii. The department of foreign art includes collections of Western European, Far Eastern, and Indian art. There are more than 13,000 exhibits in the collection of the Minsk Art Museum (1973).