The exhibition of the Engels Museum of Local Lore displays a certificate of awarding the title “Honorary Citizen of the City of Engels” to Yakov Yakovlevich Weber.

The Engels district assembly of deputies № 43/3 of April 3, 1997, adopted a decision to award the title “Honorary Citizen of the City of Engels” to Yakov Yakovlevich Weber, an artist, Honored Art Worker of the Republic of the Volga Germans, and included him in the book “Honorary Citizens of the Сity of Engels”. This certificate marks the long-awaited recognition of the merits of Yakov Weber, an outstanding artist and master of the Volga landscape, by the residents of the city of Engels, his descendants and admirers. Despite the fact that the appreciation of the artist’s work came several decades after his death, the symbolic significance of this event can hardly be overestimated.

The first solo exhibition of the artist was held in the Engels Museum of Local Lore after his death. The museum staff collected Yakov Weber’s legacy bit by bit, with many works in need of restoration, recovery of authentic attribution and thorough scientific research. The modern generation of museum workers, in continuing the tradition of their older colleagues, cherish Weber’s works. Years later, not only did the art exhibition remain open, but changed its status to a permanent one. In addition to paintings, the visitors are shown rare documents, letters, photographs, and memorial things that belonged to Yakov Weber personally. The exhibition reveals the great skill of the artist, who managed to remain faithful to art and carried his love for painting and his native land through all the hardships and challenges of his fate.

Yakov Weber wrote in 1951, “I have never really had to think about what I will do in the future, nor did anyone ask me about it, as if they knew it was a settled question… Art, which chose me to serve it, offered me nothing but pure happiness…“.