State Scientific-Research Museum of Architecture named after A.V. Shchusev

The idea of creating a museum of architecture was born in Russia at the end of the 19th century under the influence of an increased interest in national heritage. The material accumulated by various institutions and museums in the XIX century in the process of research and restoration of architecture monuments, needed to be generalized. There was a need for a higher-level scientific and educational center of a new type - in the museum of architecture. The museum was established on January 1, 1934, simultaneously with the establishment of the Academy of Architecture of the USSR. The museum was a division of this Academy. The largest domestic specialists in the history and theory of architecture worked at the museum. In 1935, the territory and buildings of the Donskoy Monastery were transferred to it. The main exhibition is located in the Great Cathedral. Inside the open-air monastery walls, artistic fragments of destroyed monuments were found, saved by the museum staff and becoming part of the collection. The object of the museum collection and display was declared world architecture from ancient times to the XIX century. The funds of the museum combined materials on Russian architecture, which made up the greater part of the collection, with materials on European, Byzantine, and Middle Eastern architecture. There were even such exotic exhibits as sample mock-ups from New Zealand huts and Indo-Chinese pile dwellings. The key object of the show was the monastery buildings and the preserved necropolis of the XVIII-XIX centuries.