Gosudarstvennyĭ muzeĭ gorodskoĭ skulʹptury, Urban sculpture museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The State Museum of Urban Sculpture is a museum in Saint Petersburg that displays monuments, memorial plaques, and decorative sculptures in both indoor and outdoor settings. Its collection is spread across several locations around the city, covering works from different periods of the city's history.
The museum was founded in 1932 with the goal of protecting sculptures and monuments that had survived the years following the Russian Revolution. Over the following decades, its scope grew as more works from the city's public spaces came under its care.
The museum oversees several cemeteries in the city, including the one at Alexander Nevsky Lavra, where visitors can walk among the tombs of well-known Russian artists and thinkers from past centuries. The gravestones themselves are often finely carved works, showing how sculpture and city life have long been intertwined in Saint Petersburg.
Because the exhibition sites are spread across the city, it is worth deciding in advance which locations you want to visit. Outdoor works can generally be seen at any time of year, while the indoor spaces follow set opening hours.
The museum is responsible for maintaining sculptures housed in other city museums, including works kept at the Russian Museum and the Hermitage. This means that some pieces in its collection can be seen by visitors without them ever realizing they are looking at works managed by a different institution.
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