The Rusanov House Museum was opened on December 25, 1982. At the same time, a bronze bust of Vladimir Rusanov, created by the sculptor Vyacheslav Potapin, became a prominent exhibit in the museum.

Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Potapin was a Soviet and Russian sculptor. He was born in the village of Rakitovka, Orenburg Region, in 1942. In 1973 he graduated from the Surikov Moscow Art Institute of the Academy of Arts of the USSR. Potapin created small-scale and monumental sculpture. In 1975, he became a member of the Union of Artists of Russia. In 1973–1986 he lived in the city of Oryol, taught at the art and graphics department of the Oryol Pedagogical Institute and at the Oryol Art College. In 1986 he moved to Nizhny Novgorod and worked there.

Vladimir Rusanov was a geologist and a polar explorer. He was born into a merchant family in the city of Oryol on November 15, 1875. Vladimir Rusanov spent his childhood and youth in Oryol — in the house that has become a museum. The future polar explorer studied at the Oryol grammar school for boys, and then at the Oryol Theological Seminary. In his youth he took part in the revolutionary movement. After a political exile, he emigrated to France, where he graduated from the Faculty of Sciences at the Sorbonne. Fascinated by the Arctic, Rusanov led five expeditions to Novaya Zemlya. He was the first Russian scientist to go around the Northern and Southern Islands of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. Rusanov laid the foundation for several new directions in the study of the Arctic zone of Russia. In his scientific works, Rusanov dealt with the problems of the Northern Sea Route.

In 1912, Rusanov completed research in the Svalbard archipelago, having established 28 claims for coal deposits and secured Russia’s rights. His expedition headed east and disappeared into the vast expanses of the Arctic. Many researchers tried to unravel the mystery with eleven members of the expedition disappearing for good. In the 1970s, the search was carried out by the expedition of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, and the Oryol expedition “By the Paths of Pathfinders” was organized several times from 1988. Over the years, many items that belonged to Rusanov and his team were found in the Arctic, but the place of their death has not yet been discovered.