Sumy - Museums

Museums

The Sumy Regional Art Museum was opened in 1920. It was started from nationalized private collections of the town and district. Paintings of Taras Shevchenko, Vladimir Borovikovsky, I. Shyskin, Arkhip Kuindzhi and Tetyana Yablonska are on display, including a beautiful Dutch landscape by a painter of Jan van Goyen's circle. Today the museum is one of the most outstanding art centres which contains unique paintings and works of applied art. The building of the early 20th century originally belonged to the State Bank.

The Museum of Local Lore was opened in 1920. In the years of fascist occupation the most important items of its collections were lost. Today it contains unique collections covering archeology and natural history of the Sumy region. It is located in the building of the 19th century which originally was the seat of the district government. In 1905 it was given to the printing house and publishing house of the first Sumy newspapers. In different years the building was visited by A. Kuprin and V. Korolenko, the famous Russian writers.

The Chekhov Museum, located in Chekhov street is a unique architectural complex representing Lintvarev’s country estate of the 18th – 19th centuries. In 1888–1889 a great writer and dramatist Anton Chekhov was dreaming to settle in Luka forever but his dream did not come true. “Abbacia and the Adriatic Sea are wonderful, but Luka and Psiol are better” – he wrote in his letter from Italy to his friends in Sumy in 1894.