Description of the attraction
The National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus is one of the most interesting museums in Belarus, a museum with a dramatic destiny. The museum collection began in 1939, when the Polish period in the history of Western Belarus ended, it was annexed to the USSR. On January 24, 1939, a special decision of the Council of People's Commissars of the BSSR was issued on the creation of the State Art Gallery in Minsk. It was decided to allocate fifteen rooms for the exposition in the Higher Communist Agricultural School.
Thanks to the selfless efforts of the first director of the gallery, Nikolai Prokopyevich Mikholap, priceless works of art and religious objects were saved from the gentry estates plundered by the Bolsheviks, Orthodox and Catholic churches.
Here, under the protection of the gallery, real treasures were collected in a few pre-war months. In total, there were 2,711 unique exhibits. Before the start of the war, the museum was preparing for evacuation, the entire collection was described and packed and … disappeared without a trace. Most likely, the works of art were taken away by the fascist invaders. Unfortunately, no exhibits from the gallery's collection have been found so far.
In 1944, Elena Vasilievna Aladova became the director of the museum, who began collecting the collection practically from scratch. At the disposal of the gallery were given only four rooms in the House of Trade Unions on Svoboda Street and those that at first seemed empty. Painstaking hard work began, but thanks to the enthusiasm of the team gathered around Aladova, the museum literally rose from the ashes. The country, devastated by the war, found funds to redeem priceless national treasures from private collections. Thus, paintings by B. Kustodiev, V. Polenov, K. Bryullov and I. Levitan were acquired.
The incredible optimism of E. V. Aladova was passed on to everyone. So, in a city lying in ruins, Elena Vasilievna obtained permission to build a huge magnificent building of the Art Gallery. At that time, the entire collection consisted of only 317 pieces. A young architect Mikhail Ivanovich Baklanov took over the design of the new museum. Thanks to his efforts on the street. Lenin in eight years, a real palace was erected - a temple of arts with a massive facade and a triangular pediment, inside which a solemn marble colonnade opens.
In 1993 the museum was renamed. Now it is called the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus.
