State Museum of Fine Art n.a. Pushkin is one the best known in the world. It hosts a breath-taking collection of paintings, graphics, sculpture and other pieces of art. Besides, every now and then the museum presents guest exposition invited from various contries.
Museum of Fine Art was, probably, the first museum of arts in Russia built for that very purpose - unlike Tretyakov's Gallery, for example, or Hermitage. The building was found in 1898, generally constructed by 1904, and it took 8 more years to complete teh decoration and gather the initial collection. The museum was planned as a public storage of copies of classic arts and as a study guide for students.
GMII (that's Russian abbreviation for modern name) consists of several areas, each presenting a major stage of art history: Egypt, Anciets Greece and Rome, Renaissance, and so on. There are copies of most beutiful and famous sculptures from a number of Europinian museums and quite a few originals.
After revolution just found museum of Western Painting ( which included masterpieces of French, English, Italian and other foreign artists - unlike Russian painting collection of Tretyakov's Gallery) joined Museum of Fine Art and a little later recieved its curent name. Nowadays GMII possess so many brilliant specimens of Flemish painting, Italians, impressionism and other styles, that you spend day by day meditating among them.
Yesterday I went there to see the guest exposition - a collection of JMW Turner's works provided by Tate Britain gallery. What an exquisite beauty I had a pleasure to witness! It was definitely worth standing for an hour before getting in :)
To get an idea of collection possessed by GMII follow that link.
