Moscow museums · Art
Art · since 1994
The Department of Private Collections
Department of Private Collections, Pushkin Museum
original name: Отдел личных коллекций ГМИИ имени А. С. Пушкина
The only museum in Russia where a collection is shown under the collector’s name instead of being dissolved into the general halls — a principle that matters for the history of collecting. Its loss is real; the display is closed.
Founded
1994
The museum is currently closed to visitors.
What to see
The collections of Ilya Zilberstein, Sviatoslav Richter, Alexander Tyshler and Dmitry Krasnopevtsev — some seven thousand works of Russian and Western European art of the 15th to 20th century.
Reference
About the museum
A department created on Ilya Zilberstein’s idea: collections given to the museum whole are shown as collections, under the collector’s name. Opened in 1994.
The building
The Golitsyn estate on Volkhonka, converted for the museum in the 1990s.
Good to know
The display is closed, and this is not a month of repairs: the collectors’ collections have been dispersed into the general halls of the Pushkin Museum. The principle of “a collection under the name of the person who made it” now survives only in the storerooms — a loss we consider real.
What to read
Beverly Whitney Kean, “All the Empty Palaces: The Merchant Patrons of Modern Art in Pre-Revolutionary Russia” — how private Moscow collections were made, and what became of them. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1983.
Getting in
How to get there
Metro Kropotkinskaya, Borovitskaya or Biblioteka imeni Lenina
Opening times
The museum is closed to visitors.
The permanent display has been closed since 2015: the building is part of the Pushkin Museum’s “museum town” works. Individual exhibitions of the department are shown in other buildings. Checked 14 August 2026.
Ticketschecked on 15 August 2026, the museum website
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When to go
Closed to visitors since 2015.
Contacts
pushkinmuseum.art · +7 (495) 697-16-10
Of interest to children
The display is closed.
Access for visitors with limited mobility
The museum — not checked. The display is closed.
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