Pushkin Museum

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts opened in 1912 as a teaching museum for Moscow University, housed in a neoclassical building designed by Roman Klein. The original collection consisted mainly of plaster casts of ancient sculptures, but nationalization after 1917 transformed it into one of Russia's premier art museums. Works from aristocratic estates and the Hermitage flowed into the collection, along with the legendary holdings of merchants Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov.

The Shchukin and Morozov donations give the Pushkin exceptional strength in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting. Works by Monet, Degas, Cézanne, and Van Gogh fill the galleries, alongside Picasso and Matisse. The European Old Masters collection includes paintings by Rembrandt, Poussin, and Boucher. Egyptian antiquities and Greek gold complete the encyclopedic scope.