Russian Museum - the country's first state museum of Russian fine art, founded in 1895 in St. Petersburg by decree of Emperor Nicholas II. Solemnly opened to visitors - March 19, (March 7, old style) in 1898.

Currently, the collection of the Russian Museum has about 400,000 exhibits and covers all historical periods and tendencies of development of Russian art, all its main forms and genres, trends and schools for more than 1,000 years: from X to XXI century. The main exhibition is located in the Mikhailovsky Palace and Benois Wing, which is part of the palace complex.

To the museum complex, in addition to the Mikhailovsky Palace with the Benois Wing and the Rossi Wing also include Marble and Stroganov Palace, Mikhailovsky (Engineers') Castle, as well as unique landscape and parks - Summer garden with a summer palace of Peter I and the Mikhailovsky Garden.

Currently, the collection of Russian museum consists of the following departments: Russian and Soviet painting, sculpture, drawing, arts and crafts and folk art (furniture, porcelain, glass, wood, lacquer, metal products, textiles, embroidery, lace, etc.) . In the ancient monuments of the department are well represented icons, works by Andrei Rublev and Simon Ushakov. The most comprehensive is the collection of art of XVIII - first half XIX centuries, including works Borovikovsky, Levitsky, Kiprensky, Bryullov. The second half of the XIX century is represented by works of artists - Wanderers: Shishkin, Kramskoy, Repin, Vasnetsov, Surikov and others. Here you can also see works by Vrubel, Kustodiev, Roerich, artists of the Soviet period - Petrov-Vodkin, Fly and others.

The Russian Museum today - a unique repository of artistic treasures, a famous restoration center, an authoritative research institute, one of the largest centers of cultural and educational work, scientific and methodological center of art museums of the Russian Federation, who oversees the work of 260 art museums in Russia.