The Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts was established in 1958 by order of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR and the order of the Ministry of Culture of DASSR on the basis of the art department of the Dagestan Regional Museum (now the National Museum of the Republic of Dagestan named after A. Takho-Godi).

The collection of the museum consists of Russian and Western European fine art (painting, drawing, sculpture) and decorative arts, as well as applied arts of the East, transferred to the republican museum of local lore in the 1920–1930s by the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Hermitage Museum, the Russian Museum, the State Museum Fund, the Main Committee of Museums and the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquities of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR.

Part of the collection of Prince Baryatinsky from the Caucasian Military History Museum "Temple of Glory" in Tiflis also arrived in Dagestan, and the Council of People's Commissars of the Georgian ASSR transferred many works of art of the 19th century on the theme of the Caucasus and Dagestan in particular. A significant part of this collection became the basis of the funds of the young museum of fine art.

In 1964, Patimat Gamzatova was appointed director of the Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts, who ran the museum until 2000. With her, the number of exhibits increased to 14000, due to the replenishment of funds with works of art of Russian fine and decorative arts, a significant part of which are the works of Dagestan authors. The uniqueness of the funds and active exhibition activities quickly helped the museum to gain fame throughout the world. Starting from the 1970s, the museum has demonstrated its collections at exhibitions in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, England, Kuwait, Finland, France, and Japan. The exhibits of the museum participated in exhibitions in Azerbaijan, Austria, Venezuela, Great Britain, Greece, Spain, Germany and other countries. Since 2001, by the decision of the Government of the Republic of Dagestan, the Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts has been named after Patimat Saidovna Gamzatova.

The museum is located in the center of Makhachkala, in one of the most beautiful places of the city, not far from the entrance to the park and the embankment. In the permanent exhibition of the museum, along with Western European and Russian art (painting, sculpture, porcelain), art of the East, widely represented the art of Dagestan: painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramic products, carved wood and stone, carpets, gold embroidery, silk embroidery, copper , weapons and jewelry - various types of classical and folk art, the total chronology of objects of which is more than 40 centuries – from the II millennium BC. until today. The museum has a rich collection of Dagestan fine art, the formation of which began in the 1920s, as well as a collection of authors of the Soviet and modern period, which is constantly updated. In total, the collection contains about 20000 exhibits.

The museum is one of the richest art museums in the North Caucasus. And this fact deservedly gave another name to the Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts – the Small Hermitage.
In Google Arts & Culture only the part of the richest funds of the museum is represented. These are objects of painting, drawing and sculpture of European and Russian art of the 15th – 20th centuries, as well as decorative and applied art of Dagestan. The presented content demonstrates museum rarities from the permanent exhibition of the museum, as well as items that rarely leave the funds for demonstration.

This project has been implemented with the support of the Ziyavudin Magomedov Peri Foundation. The presented high-quality images of museum exhibits were made in the boundaries of the grant of the Head of the Republic of Dagestan for 2017. A partner of the museum in the implementation of the grant was the Peri Foundation, which provided high-tech photography equipment.

The photographer who carried out the project is Gennady Viktorov, an expert interned on the basis of the Factum Foundation (Spain) and participated in several complex projects on photo-digitization of the cultural heritage: digitization and creation of a 3D model of the village of Kala Koreysh, an ancient dead village of Dagestan, one of the Muslim pilgrimage sites (2015 year); digitization of unique frescoes of Dionysius of the XVI century in the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Cathedral, the main temple of the former Ferapontov Monastery of the Vologda Oblast (2016–2017), carried out as part of a joint international program by Peri Foundation in partnership with the Factum Foundation (Spain) and Juma Al Majid (United Arab Emirates) "Cultural Heritage 2.0".

Contacts:
Address: Russia, Republic of Dagestan, Makhachkala, Maxim Gorky st., 8
Opening hours: from 10:00 to 18:00 every day, except Monday
Phone: +7 (8722) 67–25–99
E-mail: uchaltan@mail.ru

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