Three floors of the Tsarskoye Selo collection Museum

Greetings, my dear friends! Today I decided to spend some money on cultural education and go to a museum. I chose the "Tsarskoye Selo collection" museum. This museum is located in the nearest suburb of St. Petersburg, the small town of Tsarskoe Selo. During Soviet times they decided to rename this town after our great poet Alexander Pushkin. Alexander Pushkin, as well as other poets, writers, artists and musicians loved to live or visit Tsarskoe Selo. It is truly a remarkable place. Tsarskoe Selo is a small town surrounded by beautiful parks.

So it's not surprising to find many museums of all kinds in this town. In addition to the world-famous imperial palaces, there are also art galleries and memorial museums. This time I decided to visit the art museum, which is located in a mansion in the central part of the town. This cozy Art Nouveau-style mansion was built in 1909 by architect Gustav von Goli. The fate of the manor house was not favourable during the 20th century. The building was damaged during the Second World War and during numerous redevelopments. The dilapidated building was about to be demolished in the 1980s. Fortunately another solution was found.

The Tsarskoye Selo Collection Museum was founded by the artist Alexander Nekrasov as a public organisation in 1990. Six years later the museum was given the status of a state museum. The first renovation works to save and restore the mansion were carried out as soon as possible, and the museum exhibition began to take shape in the halls of the mansion. Later a big research work was carried out, which resulted in a thorough restoration of the building. Not only the exterior, but also the interiors of the building were restored with great attention to detail.

The entrance fee to the museum is 100 rubles ($1.35). You can view the museum on your own or join a guided tour. The cost of the tour is 250 rubles ($3.37) for a single visitor. After purchasing a ticket, you will enter the staircase that leads to the exhibition halls. But this staircase itself is also a bit of an exhibition hall, with the first exhibits on the walls - enigmatic musical instruments.

I decided to start my tour of the museum collections on the upper third floor and gradually go down. Part of the museum halls is devoted to permanent exposition, other rooms have temporary exhibitions. All the rooms are decorated with great love and attention to detail. There is nothing incidental; even simple furniture becomes an art object. An old wooden bedside table has the same nameplate as the paintings. "I.N. Zisman. Artist's nightstand, artist's chair" can be read on the plaque.

The core of the museum's collection consists of works by representatives of the Leningrad avant-garde of the 1920s-90s. A separate room is occupied by the works of the artists who were part of the Arefiev Circle group. These artists worked in a style that was considered anti-artistic in the Soviet Union. Now it is strange to imagine such a thing, but not so long ago, in the middle of the 20th century, ordinary officials considered themselves better experts in painting than certified art historians.

Leningrad painters often painted cityscapes and everyday scenes, and now their works have become not only works of art, but also testimonies of a bygone era. You can see on these canvases a long-gone bridge over a backfilled canal, or a flower garden beside a wooden house. In other paintings it seems as if time has stood still: young people are strolling along the Neva embankment on summer nights the same way nowadays.

On the first floor of the mansion there is an exhibition hall. In this hall there is an exhibition of book illustrations. In fact it was the exhibition that was my main reason for choosing this day to visit the museum. The works by Alexey Pakhomov captivate with their clean lines, plasticity of drawing, and precise composition. Another exhibition took place on the ground floor, in the hall with a fireplace. There is no special museum shop, but there is a small counter in case you want to buy exhibition brochures or art albums.

○	○
Smartphone	Google Pixel 3a
Location	Saint Petersburg, Russia

This is my entry for the #marketfriday challenge by @dswigle.