Museums near MSU Botanical Garden

Art · since 2015

The AZ Museum

significant

A one-artist museum, Anatoly Zverev, grown out of a private collection. Its value is not scale — the rooms are few and the works small — but the way of showing: an exhibition here is built as a statement, with sequence and light, rather than hung along the walls, and in Moscow that is rare. About Zverev himself an honest word is owed: an uneven artist, part of whose legacy rests on the speed of the hand rather than on depth, and his best things have to be picked out. The museum does not conceal this, which is why it is believed.

Painting and drawing by Anatoly Zverev from Natalia Opaleva’s collection. Exhibitions setting Zverev beside other artists of his circle. Work by Vladimir Nemukhin and other nonconformists.

8.7 km from here · 2nd Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street 20–22 · ·

· No. 73

Science and nature · since 1993

The Water Museum

for enthusiasts

A departmental museum with working models of city infrastructure — an almost extinct genre. Worth seeing for anyone curious about how the city works underground; there is nowhere else in Moscow for that.

Working models of waterworks, from the Rostokino aqueduct to the present treatment plants; the history of the Moscow sewer in drawings and photographs.

8.7 km from here · Sarinsky Proyezd 13 · ·

· No. 39

Unusual · since 1991

The Bookplate Museum

niche

The only collection of bookplates in Russia — a field between graphic art and bibliophilia shown systematically nowhere else. The circle of admirers is narrow, the subject genuine.

Bookplates by Russian and foreign artists, miniature editions and micro-books, writing on a grain of rice and miniatures on ivory.

8.8 km from here · Pushechnaya 7/5, bldg 2 (2nd floor) · ·

· No. 40

Art · since 2016

Museum of Russian Impressionism

outstanding

The term “Russian impressionism” is contested, and this is the only institution that investigates rather than illustrates it. The value is the exhibition programme: works come here from private collections that would otherwise never be seen.

Konstantin Korovin, Valentin Serov, Igor Grabar, Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky. The building is a converted cylindrical flour store of the Bolshevik factory — a rare case of industry turned into a museum.

8.9 km from here · Leningradsky Prospekt 15, bldg 11 · ·

· No. 51

Art · since 2006

The Museum of the Russian Icon

outstanding

For Ethiopian Christian art it is the only collection in Russia; for the Russian icon it competes with state museums. Add a circumstance almost unheard of anywhere in the world for a collection of this level: admission is free.

The Russian icon of the 14th to 20th century, from Novgorod panels to Old Believer painting; Ethiopian Christian art, the only such collection in Russia; a reconstructed iconostasis and post-Byzantine Greek icons.

8.9 km from here · Goncharnaya 3, bldg 1 · ·

· No. 54

Science and nature · since 1937

The Palaeontological Museum

outstanding

The largest palaeontological collection in the country and one of the largest anywhere, and its chief part was dug by its own people: the dinosaur skeletons were brought from the Gobi by the Soviet-Mongolian expeditions of the 1940s and 1970s. Roy Chapman Andrews found the Flaming Cliffs for New York in the 1920s and had to leave; the field was worked out afterwards from this side, and the results stayed here. Neither South Kensington nor the American Museum has Mongolian material of this weight — they have their own digs and their own regions. The 1987 building was raised for this collection and is a monument in itself. What is not here is the fairground: this is a museum of bones, and a dinosaur is evidence rather than an attraction.

Skeletons of Tarbosaurus and Saurolophus from the Gobi. A mammoth from the Arctic coast. Panels and reliefs made for the museum by animal painters — a rare case in which the fitting-out of a museum is itself a work. The Precambrian and Palaeozoic halls, which popular museums usually do not have at all.

9.0 km from here · Profsoyuznaya Street 123 · ·

· No. 64

Unusual · since 1912

The Museum of Music

outstanding

One of the largest collections of musical instruments in the world and the only place in Russia where the instrument is shown as an object of history. One can go from horn and gusli to Murzin’s synthesiser, named with Scriabin’s initials — the machine on which the music for Solaris was written. Here too is kept the State Collection of unique instruments: Stradivari, Guarneri, Amati. The Horniman shows the instrument as ethnography and the Royal College of Music shows it as performance history; here both lines run in one room, and the electronic one continues them. One thing must be known: the collection is a working one, instruments are lent to musicians, and they are not always to be found in the case.

Instruments of the peoples of the world, from Russian gusli to the Japanese koto. The ANS synthesiser of Yevgeny Murzin, named with Scriabin’s initials. Autographs and manuscripts of Russian composers. The State Collection of stringed instruments, when it is in the museum.

9.1 km from here · Fadeyeva Street 4

· No. 65

Unusual · since 2007

The Arcade Machines Museum

for enthusiasts

The only museum where the exhibit works: the machine starts on a coin, and that changes the whole way of meeting the object. As a monument of late Soviet daily life it is precise and honest.

Sea Battle, Gorodki, Sniper, Safari — the machines work rather than stand behind glass; and the soda machine with a faceted glass.

9.1 km from here · Rozhdestvenka 12 · ·

· No. 48

Art · since 1981

The Museum of Decorative Art

significant

Lacquer miniature of four schools and propaganda porcelain — the objects by which Russia is recognisable in world decorative art. The material is first-rate; the display is not up to it.

Lacquer miniature — Palekh, Fedoskino, Mstyora, Kholuy; Soviet propaganda porcelain; toys of the peoples of the world; embroidery and samovars.

9.4 km from here · Delegatskaya 3, bldg 1 · ·

· No. 32

Architecture and estates · since 1923

Kolomenskoye

outstanding

The Church of the Ascension of 1532 is the first stone tented church in Russia and the only building in Moscow on the World Heritage list. The tent here is structure and not ornament, and sixteenth-century Russian architecture cannot be understood without having stood under it. The rest is a museum reserve with a middling collection: icons, tiles, manuscripts, wooden buildings brought from the North. And one warning: the palace of Alexei Mikhailovich shown in every photograph is a 2010 replica put up elsewhere in the park; it should not be confused with the real Kolomenskoye.

The Church of the Ascension, 1532. The Church of the Beheading of St John the Baptist at Dyakovo, sixteenth century, usually empty. The Front Gate with its display. Peter the Great’s cabin, brought from Arkhangelsk. Tiles and icons in the reserve’s exhibitions.

9.9 km from here · Andropova Prospekt 39 ·

· No. 69