Uglich State Historical, Architectural and Art Museum

The Uglich State Historical, Architectural and Art Museum () is a museum in Uglich, Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia. It occupies several buildings within the Uglich Kremlin, including the late-15th-century Palace of the Uglich Appanage Princes and the Church of Tsarevich Dmitry on the Blood (1692). The museum was established in 1892 as the Uglich Museum of Antiquities and holds over 30,000 items in its collection.

History

Founding

The museum opened on 3 June O.S. 1892 in the restored Palace of the Uglich Appanage Princes, a civil-architecture monument from the 1480s built by Prince Andrey Bolshoy, brother of Ivan III. Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and his wife Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna attended the ceremony, along with a large number of Uglich residents. Originally called the Museum of Domestic Antiquities (Музей отечественных древностей), it was organized by local enthusiasts, and its early collection consisted of objects donated by the townspeople.

The first notable acquisition was the so-called "exiled bell" (ссыльный колокол), the alarm bell that had been rung in 1591 to announce the death of Tsarevich Dmitry. After the uprising that followed, the bell was punished alongside the rioters: its tongue was torn out and it was sent into exile in Tobolsk, Siberia, where it remained for three centuries. It was returned to Uglich in 1892 and became the museum's founding exhibit; it is now displayed in the Church of Tsarevich Dmitry on the Blood.

In the year of its opening, the museum had nine rooms and an initial collection of 13,000 objects. A catalogue published in 1894 listed fifteen sections. After the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei in 1905, his widow Elizabeth Fyodorovna continued to support the institution. By the eve of the Revolution, attendance had reached around 11,000 visitors per year, and the collection had grown to approximately 300,000 objects (many of these were subsequently dispersed or reclassified).

Soviet period

Following the October Revolution, the museum was placed under state control by a decree of 5 October 1918. During the nationalization of church and monastic property in 1919, the museum received icons, liturgical objects, and private collections from closed monasteries and from the estates of local noble families, among them relics of the War of 1812 from the collection of the Kasatkin-Rostovsky family. By the mid-1920s, the inventoried collection numbered about 4,020 items, and the museum had expanded with sections devoted to archaeology, ethnography, natural history, and anti-religious propaganda.

The construction of the Uglich Reservoir in the 1930s, which flooded parts of the town, prompted concern for the preservation of local monuments. During World War II, part of the collection was evacuated to Galich in 1941.

In the 1950s, the museum focused on restoring the fabric of the Kremlin buildings. A major programme of scientific and restoration work, led by researchers who also compiled the first systematic inventories, resulted in new exhibitions in 1957 and 1958. In late 1958 or early 1959, the institution was reorganized from a regional-studies museum (краеведческий музей) into a historical-art museum. An art department opened in 1963 with about 360 items, including Old Russian decorative and applied art and portraits by the Uglich painter I. V. Tarkhanov. A permanent Soviet-period exhibition opened in 1967, displaying 1,398 objects.

In 1970, the collection was inventoried again; it then comprised four departments, with over 110 scientific-reference files and around 60 items of archaeological material. By the early 1980s, the museum was receiving over 300,000 visitors a year.

Post-Soviet era and current status

During the 1990s and 2000s, the museum concentrated on conservation and acquisition. In 1994, a collection of Old Russian icons was donated by E. V. Ilyukhina. In 1996, a gallery of 17th- and 18th-century Russian porcelain opened in a room named after the museum patron I. N. Potyomkin.

On 24 November 2004, the museum was officially renamed the Uglich State Historical, Architectural and Art Museum (its current title). In 2008, it acquired a separate exhibition building outside the Kremlin, on the central square, housing a gallery of modern Orthodox painting titled Under Blessed Protection (Под Благодатным Покровом).

The museum now holds over 30,000 catalogued objects in its scientific and repository collections, including icons, weapons, paintings and graphic works from the 18th to 20th centuries, coins, archaeological finds, decorative-art items, and ethnographic material.

See also

• Uglich
• Tsarevich Dmitry