Fine Arts Museum Kharkiv

• Established — 1920 • Location — Kharkiv, Ukraine • Type — Art museum • Architect — Oleksiy Beketov • Website — artmuseum.kh.ua

The Kharkiv Art Museum was founded in 1905 and was originally called the City Art and Industry Museum. The Kharkiv historian Dmytro Bahalii headed the commission for completing the new museum. In 1907, at the personal request of Bahalii, Ilya Repin donated to the museum his portrait of General Mikhail Dragomirov. In 1920 the museum was named the Church-Historical Museum. Its collection consisted of artworks from the Kharkiv and Volyn diocesan repositories and the collection of Kharkiv University. In 1922, it was transformed into the Museum of Ukrainian Art and divided into 3 departments: painting, sculpture and architecture. In the painting department, samples of book graphics, a collection of icons of the 16th–19th centuries, as well as portrait, landscape and genre painting of the 18th–19th centuries were collected. In the 1930s, the museum was closed to the public. In 1944, it was re-opened under the name of the Museum of Ukrainian Art; in 1949–1965, it was called the State Museum of Fine Arts, before the current name was adopted. On 2 and 8 March 2022, the museum building was damaged by Russian missile strikes near the site. The attacks damaged the façade, windows, and stained-glass elements. Some of the museum's most valuable exhibits were evacuated. On 31 December 2023, the building was again affected by a blast wave caused by another Russian attack. On 14 June 2026, at 5:50 p.m., the Russian army carried out a direct strike on the building, reportedly using a Shahed-type unmanned aerial vehicle. The attack set the roof of the historic building on fire, shattered windows, and caused the collapse of the ceilings above the second floor. No injuries were reported. During the firefighting operation, emergency responders and city services, including the Mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, attempted to evacuate the museum's exhibits to a shelter. Some paintings were damaged by the explosion or destroyed by the fire. Firefighting efforts were temporarily suspended because of the threat of a repeated strike.

• Illustration — The building of the Kharkiv Art Museum The building of the Kharkiv Art Museum is located at the address: Zhon Myronosyts Street, 11. It was built in 1912 according to the design of the Ukrainian architect and academician Oleksiy Beketov for the industrialist I. E. Ignatishchev, the owner of the Kharkiv Ivanovo brewery. The building is designed in a Neoclassicism style with Baroque and Art Nouveau elements. After the October Revolution and the establishment of Soviet power in Kharkiv, the residence was nationalized, and from 1922 to 1928, the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) of Ukraine, headed by the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR Vlas Chubar, worked out of the building. After the SNK moved in 1928, the former Ignatishchev Mansion housed the Taras Shevchenko Institute (now the National Taras Shevchenko Museum in Kyiv) in the building of Derzhprom. In the post-war period, this building housed the Kharkiv Art Museum.