Kuindzhi Art Museum

Kuindzhi Art Museum (Художній музей імені Куїнджі) was an art museum located in the city of Mariupol in Ukraine. It is dedicated to the display of the life and works of the artist Arkhip Kuindzhi, who was born in the city. The museum opened on 30 October 2010, but its creation was proposed almost a century earlier.

The museum building was destroyed by an airstrike on March 21, 2022, during the Siege of Mariupol. Three original works by Kuindzhi were not in the museum at the time, but works by other artists were.

History
The history of Mariupol as a sustainable settlement began in 1778. Therefore, there are relatively few architectural monuments in the city, and some of the most valuable ones have been destroyed without restoration (all Orthodox churches in the city, the Zemstvo, most of the historic shops on Torgovaya Street, the historic buildings of the central Kateryninskaya Street). Among the accidentally preserved buildings, the most fully represented are those in the Secession style (a decorative style of capitalism - Art Nouveau).

The creation of a museum in Mariupol dedicated to Arkhip Kuindzhi was first suggested in 1914. A potential donation of works from the Kuindzhi Society of Artists was proposed, but the First World War delayed decision-making. Serious consideration to the construction of a museum was once again made in the 1960s, but funding was unavailable for a museum and the Kuindzhi Exhibition Centre opened instead. In 1997 premises were donated and renovation began in 2008.

The museum opened on 30 October 2010 as a branch of the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore. It is housed in a building that was constructed in 1902 as a wedding gift for the wife of the founder of the Real School, Valentina Gadzinova. In 2015 the museum celebrated the 175th anniversary of the birth of its namesake. In 2019 the French ambassador to Ukraine, Isabelle Dumont, visited the museum, praising its work.

The museum was destroyed by a Russian airstrike on March 21, 2022, during the Siege of Mariupol. Three original works by Kuindzhi had been removed from the museum and ended up looted by Russia. The fate of paintings by other artists (Ivan Aivazovsky, Mykola Hlushchenko, Tetyana Yablonska, Mykhailo Deregus, Andrii Kotska, Mykola Bendryk, Leonid Gadi) is unknown.

Collections and research
The art collection includes 650 paintings, 960 graphic works, 150 sculptures and over 300 decorative art objects. Much of this collection was developed by the Mariupol Museum of Local History during the twentieth century.

Three original works by Kuindzhi were held at the museum, as well as copies of his works. The original works are the sketches Red West, Autumn – Crimea and Elbrus, donated by the State Russian Museum to the local history museum in Mariupol (then known as Zhdanov after a Soviet functionary) in the 1960s. Their current whereabouts are unknown.

The museum also holds papers relating to the life of Kuindzhi, as well as a copy of his 1841 Ukrainian birth certificate.

It includes the work of other artists, such as Victoria Kovalchuk who exhibited there, as well as Ivan Aivazovsky, Vasily Vereshchagin, Ivan Shishkin, amongst others.

The museum has provided evidence to support an 1841 date for Kuindzhi's birth, which has been the subject of debate due to contrasting evidence. This debate was played out between Russian and Ukrainian Wikipedias.