National Art Museum of Ukraine, State art museum in central Kyiv, Ukraine.
The National Art Museum of Ukraine is a state art museum in central Kyiv that holds around 40,000 works, including paintings, sculptures, and graphic art by Ukrainian creators. The collection is organized into three main sections that cover different periods and styles of Ukrainian art.
The museum opened on December 30, 1904, as the Kyiv Art-Industrial and Scientific Museum under the patronage of Emperor Nicholas II. Over the course of the 20th century, the institution changed its name several times and eventually became the national museum for Ukrainian art.
Religious icons from the 12th century are among the oldest works on display and trace the development of sacred art in the region over several centuries. Visitors can also see many pieces by national poet Taras Shevchenko, who worked as a painter in addition to his literary career.
The museum welcomes visitors from Wednesday through Sunday, while it remains closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. The rooms are spread across several floors, so it helps to allow enough time to walk through the different sections.
The two stone lions at the foot of the staircase are part of the sculptural decoration of the main facade carried out by Italian sculptor Elio Sal, who also filled the pediment with a relief of many figures and placed a sculptural group at its apex. The building was designed by Władysław Horodecki, reworking a project by Pyotr Boytsov, and cost 249,000 rubles, of which the government and the Tereshchenko family each gave 100,000.
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