Nalbandyan Studio Museum

About the exhibition

Nalbandyan's Studio Museum was founded at the initiative of the Moscow City Government in 1992: the artist’s collection donated to the city of Moscow became the core of the display. Housed at the site of Nalbandyan’s studio at 8/2, Tverskaya street, now the Museum meticulously recreates the space where the Soviet artist once lived and worked.

In 1956 Dmitry Nalbandyan, an artist, a laureate of two Stalin prizes, a full member of the Academy and a bright figure of postwar Soviet elite, got a generous space for his artistic studio on the 9th floor of a residential building in Moscow. The studio was not only the space where he made many of his artworks but also the meeting place for the artistic community, public activists and politicians, military commanders and eminent figures of the day.

Dmitry Nalbandyan and his family lived on the fourth floor since 1956. His neighbours were a film-director Mikhail Romm, a writer Ilya Erenburg, a poet Demyan Bedny. The top floor with large windows on the ceiling was designated for painters' workshops. Along with Nalbandyan, among the artists who lived and worked here were the Kukryniksy, Nikolay Zhukov, Vladimir Minaev, Fedor Konstantinov.

The history of the making of the Studio Museum began in November 1992, when the Government of the City of Moscow issued the ordonnance about the foundation of a new exhibition gallery, the so-called ‘Studio Museum of the People’s artist Dmitry Arkadyevich Nalbandyan’ (being a branch of the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall). On June, 16th 1993, less than a month before his death, Dmitry Nalbandyan donated thirty-six of his paintings to the city of Moscow. These works were the core of the first permanent collection of the Museum. Afterwards, due to the active support of the artist’s family, the collection extended to include the artist's graphic and pictorial works, collectible items of applied art, printed materials and photos.

Nowadays one of the Museum galleries is transformed into a sort of a memorial space comprising furniture, books, documents from the family archive, photos of Dmitry Nalbandyan with Leonid Brezhnev, Nikita Khrushchev and other politicians, as well as the artist's personal belongings. Many of the objects on display were given to the Museum by the artist's younger sister, Margarita Arkadievna Nalbandyan. Now the Studio Museum collection includes over 1500 exhibits.

Since 2018 Dmitry Nalbandyan Studio Museum has been the part of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.