The legendary museum of Yamal that replenished the collection of the Hermitage is celebrating its jubilee

The Shuryshkarskiy district museum is celebrating its jubilee. The first museum in the municipality was founded on the 24th of April of 1985 in the settlement Muzhi. Today it is named after the founder Grigory Puzyryov. Olga Samsonova became the first exhibitor and later the first director.

For all the years of its glorious history the museum has remained the center of cultural life of the district, and its exhibitions are the unique source of information, knowledge and intellectual discoveries for guests and local residents.

As in the beginning, today employees of the museum work for the entire district - mobile exhibition projects of “Kaslayushchiy Muzei” (“The travelling museum”, the word “kaslayushchiy” means travelling like nomads) are relevant and in demand. In different historical periods not only Soviet tourists, but also foreigners from Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Algeria were grateful visitors of museum events and excursions.

Over 35 years of its history the museum has changed several addresses and organizational forms. It grew, and today it is the museum complex, which consists of four branches – museums of local history and ethnographic museums.

The funds contain more than 57 thousand museum items, include ethnographic and archaeological collections, as well as a collection of decorative and applied arts. There are also unique exhibits that have made the museum famous in professional museum circles. These are silver objects, a Byzantine Bowl with a scene of Alexander flying on griffins, two lids and a tank of bowls with images of dragons and birds of Northern European origin in the second half of the XII – early XIII centuries. They were found by schoolchildren in the settlement Lopkhari. In 2004 the Bowl was solemnly donated to the State Hermitage Museum. Every year the collection is replenished with items of historical and cultural value.

The issue of creation of a permanent exhibition stays the main topic of future development of the Shuryshkarskiy district museum. Over the years the district museum often changed its “registration”. But in October of 2019, according to the decision of the administration of Shuryshkarskiy district, the municipal establishment “Shuryshkarskiy district museum complex” received an administrative building with further assignment - the Shuryshkarskiy district museum. The museum is actively working on creation of a new permanent exhibition “Muzei zakamennikh putei” (“Museum of behind-the-stone paths”). It will be a modern exhibition on the area of more than 200 square meters. And new museum spaces will allow introducing significant spheres of work. Since that moment on the museum will start writing a new page in its history.

Photos from the archive can be found here: https://sever-press.ru/2020/04/24/otmechaet-jubilej-legendarnyj-muzej-jamala-popolnivshij-kollekciju-jermitazha/