One of the largest cultural centers of Russia, in which a large number of different institutions are concentrated, is the city of Chelyabinsk. The local history museum of this region is a unique treasury of spiritual heritage. Today it is one of the oldest institutions in the region involved in the storage and collection of a variety of monuments of art, history and scientific collections. The funds held by the Chelyabinsk Regional Museum of Local Lore include more than two hundred and seventy thousand units, among which there are items of special national significance.
The first stage in the history of the museum
The history of this institution begins in 1913, when a small group of enthusiasts, led by the famous Soviet geographer and botanist Ippolit Mikhailovich Krasheninnikov, began collecting the collection. The painstaking work of these people allowed to collect a fairly large number of the most diverse materials by the autumn of 1922. At the same time, the Presidium of the Provincial Executive Committee officially provided for them the premises of a residential building on Truda Street (Chelyabinsk). The local history museum solemnly opened its doors to guests and residents of the city in July 1923. Its first director was geologist and teacher Ivan Gavrilovich Gorokhov, who subsequently devoted more than forty years of his life to this institution.
Second phase
From 1929 to 1933, the Chelyabinsk Museum of Local Lore repeatedly changed the address and moved to different rooms. The building of the former Holy Trinity Church became a more or less permanent place of his residence. It was located at the following address: Kirova street, house 60-a (the city of Chelyabinsk). The local history museum was located here from 1933 to 1989. Later, all the expositions were located on the ground floor of the building located on Lenin Avenue. As for the museum funds, at that time they were in special rooms along Kaslinskaya Street.
In 1941, this cultural institution was closed, and its building was transferred to the full jurisdiction of the NKVD. Almost until the end of the war, families of employees of the People's Commissariat lived here and evacuated archives were located.
Museum today
In June 2006, the official opening of the new building took place at 100 Labor Street (Chelyabinsk). The local history museum received modern conditions for exhibiting and storage that meet all the highest requirements of leading Russian museums. Its technical equipment is represented by a system of highly functional multimedia equipment and meets the highest standards. As for the management of the museum, since two thousand and four years its director is Vladimir Ivanovich Bogdanovsky.
The main expositions of the museum
Currently, permanent exhibitions open to view for all comers are “History and Folk Life”, “Nature and Ancient History” and “History of the 20th Century”. In the first hall, visitors are introduced to the life of people who inhabited the territory of the Southern Urals, starting from the Iron Age. The second exhibition presents a variety of samples of minerals and rocks, botanical and zoological collections, a large number of paleontological samples, archaeological materials from the Bronze Age and the Stone Age.
And finally, in the third hall, visitors are introduced to the history of the region. Here they talk about the construction of the railway in the Southern Urals, about the most significant and interesting events, as well as the socio-political changes of the eighties and nineties of the twentieth century. In addition, in the indicated hall everyone is introduced to the history of photography.