Georgian Museum of Fine Arts, Fine arts museum in central Tbilisi, Georgia
The Georgian Museum of Fine Arts is a museum in central Tbilisi housing artworks from Georgian and international artists across multiple levels. Its galleries display paintings, sculptures, and contemporary installations in changing configurations.
The site at 7 Rustaveli Avenue was occupied from 1865–67 by an Otto Simonson building that served as a court chamber, then the Oriant and Intourist hotels, and from 1977 the Artists' House, destroyed by fire in 1991. Construction of the museum began in 2013 and lasted five years; it opened on 26 September 2018 and to the public on 2 October 2018.
The museum's name in Georgian is ქართული სახვითი ხელოვნების მუზეუმი. Its first major temporary show, held in October 2023 for the fifth anniversary, was "Banksy: Birth of an Icon", curated by Steve Lazarides, Banksy's former photographer and manager. One room, curated by Elene Kapanadze, showed works by Tbilisi street artists including Gagosha, Mishiko Sulakauri, Semichka, Koska and Sick'n Tired.
The museum stands at 7 Rustaveli Avenue, opposite the Parliament of Georgia, in the Art House complex. The permanent exhibition occupies the third, fourth and fifth floors, reached by glass staircases, with 31 halls across about 7,000 square metres. A three-level car park for around 155 vehicles serves the complex, which also holds a 120-seat conference hall and a 300-square-metre hall for temporary shows.
The eagle on the central façade is modelled on miniature eagle figures of the 2nd–1st centuries BC excavated at Vani in western Georgia; sculptors Davit Mindorashvili and Eduard Shakhnazarov made it, and their own works hang inside. The façade is clad in Bolnisi stone, a volcanic tuff quarried for centuries in southern Georgia.
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