Description of the attraction
The Art Museum, located in the main city of the Karakalpak Republic of Nukus, is world famous for its huge collection of paintings by the Russian avant-garde. The museum owns 90 thousand works created by world-famous masters. It is officially named after Igor Vitalievich Savitsky, an artist and collector who came from Moscow to Nukus to study the culture of the Karakalpaks.
Savitsky paid great attention to collecting and preserving the works of the avant-garde artists who were persecuted by the Soviet regime. These canvases only miraculously survived and now form the basis of the collection of the local Art Museum, which was opened in 1966. Savitsky, who headed the museum, repaired the premises allocated for the collections at his own expense, and began to expand the gallery's collection, acquiring the canvases of both local and Russian artists that he liked. At the same time, he bought works of artisans from Karakalpakia and artifacts discovered by archaeologists during excavations of historical monuments of Khorezm. The museum contains several replicas of paintings from the Louvre.
In 2003, the museum's collection, which is considered the second largest in the world after the collection of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, was moved to a new building. The exhibition halls, located on three floors, are equipped with a system that contributes to the preservation of the most valuable paintings and objects that are displayed here. The State Museum of Arts, considered one of the main attractions not only in Nukus, but throughout Uzbekistan, is visited by thousands of tourists every year.
