Museums near Tolstoy in Khamovniki

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.

4.3 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.

4.4 km from here · Sarinsky Proyezd 13 · ·

· No. 39

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.

4.6 km from here · Fadeyeva Street 4

· No. 65

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.

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

· No. 32

Science and nature · since 1907

The Darwin Museum

significant

The oldest museum of evolution in Russia, built around an idea rather than around a case of stuffed animals: Kots collected proofs of variability, and the display serves the proof. It cannot match Vienna or Berlin for material, but its way of arguing stands on its own.

Early 20th-century taxidermy by Filipp Fedulov, among the finest anywhere; the collection of albinos and melanists gathered by Kots as visible proof of variability; the Living Planet hall.

5.1 km from here · Vavilova 57 · ·

· No. 57

Art · since 1965

Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum

for enthusiasts

Apollinary Vasnetsov’s reconstructions of old Moscow are not painting but scholarship: the artist made archaeological observations, and his views still serve as textbook illustrations. Here they hang in the flat where they were made.

The studio with its original furnishings, and the views of old Moscow — historical reconstructions by which the medieval city is still imagined.

5.1 km from here · Furmanny Lane 6, flats 21–22 (3rd floor) ·

· No. 13

Science and nature · since 1951

MSU Botanical Garden

for enthusiasts

The garden was laid out in 1951 together with the new university buildings on the Lenin Hills, and it is kept as a collection: every holding has its name, its count of varieties and its year. The flowering part by the gate is open to walk through on your own — lilacs, irises, roses, peonies, perennials. There are more than two hundred and fifty varieties of lilac here and about seven hundred irises; the tree peonies were bred in the university itself. Every plant here has its own name and its own provenance.

Lilacs: more than two hundred and fifty varieties, Russian and foreign; the display plot was laid out in 1974. Irises — about seven hundred, from bearded to bulbous. Roses, more than two hundred varieties. Peonies, more than three hundred, among them tree peonies bred in the university itself. Daylilies, about two hundred varieties, from the old ones to the present.

5.1 km from here · Leninskie Gory 1, bldg 12 · ·

· No. 99

Military history · since 1995

The Victory Museum

for enthusiasts

A memorial rather than a collection: its strength is the scale of the spectacle and the Hall of Remembrance, not the originals. By museum standards it is average, and you should know that before going.

The Hall of Glory and the Hall of Remembrance and Sorrow; six dioramas of the decisive battles; the open-air park of military hardware.

5.1 km from here · Pobedy Square 3 · ·

· No. 29

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.

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

· No. 51

Art · since 1947

The Rublev Museum

outstanding

The third collection of Russian icons after the Tretyakov and the Russian Museum, and the only one built as a museum of one subject: here the icon does not stand in a row of Russian art but is explained in itself, from the board and the gesso to the iconography. The holding was formed from things brought out by the museum’s expeditions from closed and ruined churches, and its value is the completeness of the line rather than single stars: famous names are almost absent, but the sequence runs unbroken from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth. In Britain icons are met in ones and twos, in Byzantine rooms and in the trade; a museum where the subject has a building of its own does not exist there. The monastery’s Saviour Cathedral, in which all this stands, is the oldest surviving building in Moscow.

Icons of the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries, gathered by the museum’s own expeditions. Royal doors and whole iconostasis sets. Fragments of wall painting. The Saviour Cathedral of the 1420s — the oldest building in Moscow, with remains of ornamental painting associated with Rublev.

5.5 km from here · Andronyevskaya Square 10 · ·

· No. 61