The Mstyora Art Museum was founded as the Mstyora State Museum of Folk Crafts by order of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR on June 17, 1945 in order to restore and develop artistic crafts.
The museum was designed to popularize the new Soviet art of Mstyora: lacquer miniature on papier-mâché, artistic embroidery, including whitework and “Vladimir topstitch”, as well as metal items decorated with filigree, embossing and engraving.
In 1954, the museum’s collection was replenished with objects of ancient Russian art: icons, carved images, wooden items painted by the masters of the artel “Ancient Russian Folk Painting” in the 1920s, as well as examples of antique whitework embroidery.
The collection of the Mstyora Art Museum grew by purchasing unique artworks created by artists who worked at the leading enterprises in Mstyora: the “Proletarian Art” factory, the Krupskaya factory, and the “Jeweler” factory.
On April 27, 1981, after major repairs, the grand opening of the new exhibition of the Mstyora Art Museum took place. The exhibition “The Art of Mstyora” is based on collections of Old Russian art, lacquer miniature, embroidery, metal items, graphics, and paintings. The Mstyora Art Museum houses over three thousand unique monuments of Russian art of the 17th–21st centuries.
In January 2024, the museum received the status of
the State Budgetary Cultural Institution of the Vladimir Oblast “Mstyora Art
Museum”.
