Collection of Michurinsk Museum of Local Lore

The exhibition “Collection of Michurinsk Museum of Local Lore” presents a collection of paintings, drawings and icons from the turn of the 20th century, as well as the money of the Russian Empire from the time of Nicholas II.

The exhibition of the Museum of Local Lore includes works by famous artists. Among them are the internationally renowned master of etching S. M. Nikireev, the salon-academic landscape painter J. Y. Klever, the Russian painter A. I. Trankovsky. Significant exhibits include the icons of St. John the Baptist, St. Basil the Great, the Resurrection of Christ, St. John Chrysostom, the Gospel tetramorph, and the Royal Doors. From the 1940s they were all in the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God of Joy of All Who Sorrow, one of the first churches officially opened in the Tambov diocese in the 1940s.

The exhibition features paper money of the Russian Empire from the turn of the 20th century. The choice of this period is not accidental. The financial reform carried out by S.Y. Witte in 1897 resulted in the introduction of the gold standard in the empire. A stable financial system was created which contributed to the development of the country’s economy. At the same time new banknotes were issued, printing techniques were developed and new ways of protecting money from counterfeiting appeared. It is particularly important to emphasize the development of the artistic design of the new banknotes, which were intended to allegorically show the power of the country and remind of its great victories. All this makes a focus on the banknotes of the last decades of the empire particularly interesting and informative.