Kaliningrad Regional Museum of Fine Arts

The Kaliningrad Regional Museum of Fine Arts is the only museum in the Kaliningrad Region that presents the artistic chronicle of the region over the past 300 years and the only one in Russia with the largest exhibition dedicated to the work of E.A.T. Hoffman, based on the decorations and dolls of the animated film "Hoffmaniade" (2018, dir.Sokolov), book illustrations and graphics for the works of Hoffmann by famous Soviet and Russian masters. The museum is a member of the Association of Literary Museums (since 2022). He is a member of the ICOM, the Association of Art Museums, and the Assembly of Peter the Great Museums of Russia.

The museum traces its history back to the Kaliningrad Art Gallery, which opened in 1988. The All-Union exhibition "Science and Space in the service of peace", the exhibits of which served as the beginning of the collection. The museum has had its current name since 2017.

In 2018, the Kaliningrad Regional Museum of Fine Arts was moved to the building of the former Konigsberg Commercial Exchange, built in 1875 by the German architect Heinrich Muller and recognized in 2007 as a monument of urban planning and architecture of regional significance. Since its construction, the building has been the center of the cultural life of the region: in the pre-war period, the Salons of the Konigsberg Academy of Arts were held here, private collections were exhibited, and public lectures were organized. A special role was played by the Philharmonic seasons, which were led by the outstanding violinist Max Brode, a pupil of Joseph Joachim, who began his career in the Russian Empire and was closely associated with the St. Petersburg Conservatory all his life. Such famous musicians as Anton Rubinstein, Pablo Casals, Artur Schnabel, Mikhail Gordin performed at the Exchange. There were Bach, Beethoven, and Haydn festivals. Russian music was also played: all of Tchaikovsky's symphonies were performed twice.

In 2022, a separate exhibition of the Kaliningrad Regional Museum of Fine Arts was opened — the House Museum of Lovis Korint, an outstanding German impressionist. The 1825 building on Wasserstrasse Street (now Vodnaya Street), where the Museum's branch is located, belonged to the artist's mother Amalia Wilhelmina Buttcher, who also owned a tannery and a plot of land adjacent to the house. The museum has the largest collection of Corinth graphics in Russia, in which book illustration occupies a significant place.

The museum's collection was formed thanks to purchases by the Ministry of Culture, gifts from artists and collectors, as well as the transfer of works from the All-Union Art and Production Association named after E.V. Vuchetich, the State Museum and Exhibition Center "Rosizopropaganda", Exhibition Directorates (the Art Fund of the RSFSR, the Union of Artists of the USSR), from the Kaliningrad Regional Historical and Art Museum, the State Hermitage Museum, The State Russian Museum and other museums.

The funds contain more than 25,000 works of domestic and foreign art from the 17th century to the present: painting, graphics, sculpture, decorative and applied arts. A special thematic fund consists of sketches by theater artists for performances.

The thematic fund dedicated to E.T.A. Hoffman is about 1,000 units. These are paintings, graphics, sculpture, numbered bibliophile publications of the first half of the XIX–XXI centuries, objects of decorative and applied art, tangible monuments and ephemera. The pride of the collection consists of the author's works of outstanding masters of the book.