Art in Saint Petersburg will be covered in full detail for you today and our opening section will discuss the best art galleries and museums near you.
After that we will get into a variety of other topics like local art supply stores, events, festivals, dealers, appraisers, walking tours, sculptures and statues, art classes, studios for rent, and the top frame shops in your area.
Contents
If you are after any specific section you can jump straight to it using the table of contents on the left and we are also including a Saint Petersburg art map with all of the various places we mention throughout the post pinned on it.
You can read more of our posts on cities around Europe here.
Best Art Galleries & Museums In Saint Petersburg
If you want to visit the best art galleries and museums in Saint Petersburg you can go to:
- Erarta Museum Of Contemporary Art at Vasilievsky Island 29th Ln
- State Hermitage Museum at 2 Palace Sq
- Arts Academy Museum at 17 Universitetskaya Naberezhnaya
- The State Russian Museum at 4 Inzhenernaya Str
- Museum Of Nonconformist Art at 10 Pushkinskaya St
- Loft Project Floors at 74 Ligovsky prospekt
- New Museum Of Contemporary Art at 29 6th Line Vasilyevsky Island
- Museum Of The Avant Garde at 10 Professora Popova St
- Artist Museum Exhibition Center at 100 Moika River Embankment
- Yelaginoostrovskiy Dvorets-Muzey at 4 Elagin Island
- Museum of Applied Art at 13-15 Solyanoy Per
- Anna Nova Art Gallery at 28 Zhukovskogo St
- Blue Hall Gallery at 38 Bolshaya Morskaya St
- Borey Art Centre at 58 Liteiny Pr
The Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art is open from 10am to 10pm every day but Tuesday when they are closed and is Russia’s largest global endeavor in contemporary art with a collection that includes around 2,800 pieces by Russian artists and every year the Erarta exhibits around 40 temporary exhibitions.
The State Hermitage Museum opens at 11am every day but Monday and has a collection of around three million works of art and cultural monuments from around the world. Painting, graphics, sculpture, and objects of applied art as well as archaeological finds and numismatic material are all included.
I. Shuvalov founded the Arts Academy Museum in 1758 and it has a one-of-a-kind collection of Western European and Russian art. Since the second half of the 18th century the collection has been used to educate students of the Academy of Arts, many of whom have gone on to become well-known personalities in Russian art from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Just don’t go on Monday or Tuesday because they will be closed all day.
The world’s first facility dedicated to the preservation and study of the unofficial culture of the Soviet Union is The Museum of Nonconformist Art. Nonconformism is a phenomenon in Soviet unofficial culture that was vividly visible in the visual arts, music, and literature.
Loft Project Floors opened in the former bakery’s building in 2007 when the team transformed the industrial zone into a creative zone with editorial offices, workshops, galleries and displayed exhibitions of topical photographers, artists, and sculptors from around the world on the building’s five floors.
The New Museum of Contemporary Art is open from noon to 7pm Wednesday through Sunday after beginning in 2010 in the historical district on the 6th line of Vasilievsky Island, 29. Aslan Chekhoev’s private collection served as the foundation for the museum and unlike most private collections Chekhoev’s is founded on an awareness of the overall picture of the development of art in our time rather than on local experience and subjective tastes.
The Museum of St. Petersburg is one of Russia’s largest historical museums, presenting a three-hundred-year history, culture, and life of the northern city. It is housed in Count P. Yu. Suzor’s mansion. The museum received one-of-a-kind papers, sketches, photographs, household objects, works of art, literature, and architectural elements from demolished or restored structures.
The Artist Museum and Exhibition Center is open from 11am to 8pm Wednesday through Sunday and has operations targeted at preserving and exposing the work of painters from the Leningrad School of Painting, a realistic mid-century style.
The Yelaginoostrovskiy Dvorets-Muzey is a structural subdivision of the Elaginoostrovsky Palace Museum which houses a rare art glass collection that is based on a collection of works by the Soviet Union’s leading glass firm the Leningrad Art Glass Factory which closed in 1996.
The Museum of Applied Arts of the State Academy of Arts and Industry in your area was named after Alfred Stieglitz and is one of the country’s most intriguing and unusual cultural landmarks. It is open from 11am to 4:30pm Tuesday through Saturday and is an integral aspect of the academy which graduates local artists in a variety of monumental, ornamental, applied art, and design disciplines as well as its cultural, educational, and exhibition center.
In 2005 Anna Barinova launched Anna Nova Gallery which is open from noon to 7pm Tuesday through Saturday and it is now one of the leading galleries near you. They aggressively encourage and promote unique and new interdisciplinary art practices including research-based initiatives and large-scale installations.
The Union of Artists of St. Petersburg’s Blue Drawing Room is an art gallery with a collection that includes works by local painters, graphic artists, sculptors-members of the Union of Artists, famous realistic masters, and emerging artists.
Exhibitions, painting, graphic arts, books, installation, stock, presentations, and publishing services are offered at The Borey Gallery Art Center from noon to 8pm Tuesday through Saturday.
Materials & Supplies Near You
These art stores in your area are good places to buy new supplies or materials:
- Art Club at 3 Vasilievsky Island 4th Line
- Chernaya Rechka at 20 Mokhovaya St
- Akvarel at 15/2 Kolomyazhsky Pr
- Restavrator Salon at 41 Lenin St
- Palitra Shop at 127 Leninsky Pr
- Artist Lab at 147 Moskovsky Pr
- Art Kvartal at Grazhdanskaya Ulitsa 12
The Art-Club first opened its doors in 1996 and the store’s placement impacted the orientation of the work for professional artists who were previously based on Vasilievsky Island.
The ArtSklad is a retail division of the Chernaya Rechka corporation which is a major player in the Russian art supplies market and they are well-known among professionals and have established a reputation as a trustworthy partner and dependable provider.
Paints, brushes, canvases, easels, paper, and other art supplies are all sold at Akvarel.
Palitra Shop is a useful internet store that sells paints, brushes, canvases, easels, and other painting supplies.
Since 2008 Artist Lab has worked with artists, designers, architects, and art enthusiasts.
Art Kvartal sells items for artists and creative individuals.
Shows & Events
Our favorite local art shows, events, and festivals would be:
- The White Nights Festival on April
- Art Prospect Festival in September
- Cyberfest in November
The White Nights Festival is an annual summer festival in Saint Petersburg that celebrates the city’s near-midnight sun phenomenon as a result of its proximity to the Arctic Circle. Each year between about April 21 and August 21, the skies only approach twilight and never completely dark and the Saint Petersburg City Administration is in charge of organizing the event.
Fostering international collaboration and community engagement by showcasing creative art projects that impact public space is the goal of The Art Prospect Festival and since 2012 the festival has been held here as well as Baku, Azerbaijan, Tbilisi, Georgia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Kyiv, Ukraine, and online.
In 2007 CYLAND launched its annual festival CYFEST, and the event developed to be housed across the city’s most prestigious institutions in subsequent editions. The festival encourages the formation of new kinds of art and high-tech interactions by fostering professional ties between artists, curators, engineers, and programmers from across the world and exposing large audiences to works in robotics, video, sound, and net art.
Art Dealers & Appraisers
Art dealers and appraisers near you are places to find new unique pieces or learn the value of something you already own:
- World of Art at 3 Varshavskaya St
- Art Nashestviye at Obukhovskoy Оborony Ave 86К
- Didi Gallery at Bolshoy Prospect 62
- Monoculture at Novocherkasskiy Prospekt 16/12
The World of Art is a small local museum and art gallery that exhibits and sells paintings and applied arts as well as author’s canvases and watercolors, graphics and batik, stained glass windows and mosaics, porcelain and artistic bronze, tapestries, and posters.
Art Nashestviye created a platform so that all artists, without exception, can identify themselves to the world. The goal of the online gallery is to allow any authors, especially young ones, to register a personal account and upload their work for free.
For a collectible art gallery focusing on unofficial Russian art from the 1950’s through the 1980’s check out Didi Gallery.
Monoculture is an internet portal dedicated to the work of Stas Royze who mixes classic abstract painting methods, abstract expressionism, and philosophical considerations based on Eastern wisdom and spiritual activities.
Walking Tours
Street Art Museum at Shosse Revolyutsii 84AB is a unique art territory that combines gallery space, street culture, and industrial aesthetics. The museum is to promote the creation, preservation and study of works of art rethinking current world artistic processes and broadcasting new ideas through exhibitions and works of local artists.
Sculptures & Statues
Another fun thing to do on a sunny day would be to check out some of these statues and sculptures in your area:
- State Museum of Urban Sculpture at Nevsky Ave 179
- Tsar Carpenter at Admiralty Embankment 6
- Ausammas Nikolai Gogolile at Malaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa 9
- Laocoön and his Sons at Krasnaya Alleya St
- Bronze Horseman at Senate Square
The Museum of Urban Sculpture is the successor to the Museum-Necropolis which was established in 1932 with the goal of preserving a unique collection of memorial sculpture from the 18th to early 20th centuries.
The spectacular Tsar Carpenter monument to Peter the Great that now sits on the Admiralty embankment has a particularly interesting background as the beautifully detailed monument depicts a young and determined Peter the Great working on a ship with rolled up sleeves and an axe in one clenched fist.
Gogol’s statue is Malaya Konyushennaya, one of the city’s most beautiful and romantic streets, which was recently renovated, paved over, and turned into a pedestrian zone with new lamps and sculptures, including Mikhail Belov’s portrayal of the novelist Nikolai Gogol.
One of the most well-known antique sculptures is Laocoon and His Sons which shows Laocoon, an Apollo priest from Troy, and his two sons who are imprisoned in the deadly coils of two serpents on an altar’s steps.
Bronze Horseman was commissioned by Catherine the Great and was erected in 1782 by the French artist Étienne Maurice Falconet.
Saint Petersburg Art Classes
Whether you are interested in private lessons or group classes for kids, teens, or adults some of the best art schools in Saint Petersburg are:
- Imperial Academy of Arts at University Embankment 17
- International Academy of Art at Kirochnaya Ulitsa 73
- Art Studio Anastasia Kornilova at Prospekt Korolova 65
- Srtiganov ART at Nevsky Ave 45
- Khudozhestvennaya Shkola Art Ideya at Grazhdanskiy Prospekt 111
- Art Studio 8 at Ligovsky Ave 107
The Imperial Academy of Arts was created in 1757 under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts by Ivan Shuvalov who was the founder of Imperial Moscow University.
As a member of the Russian Ministry of Education the International Academy of Art is led and maintained by professional and well-known international artists in a variety of courses and fields. IAA provides an artistic environment for students pursuing various art majors including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, photography, and Korean arts.
Anastasia Kornilova’s local art studio offers a school program where children will become acquainted with numerous art techniques and will receive an excellent foundation of specialist knowledge for future admittance to art educational institutions.
Striganov ART is a painting studio for children and adults of all levels of ability.
Providing students with drawing training from the beginning, improving professional skills, preparation for entry into universities, a fun, rewarding, and interesting passime, drawing classes for beginners, adults, and children is what Khudozhestvennaya Shkola Art Ideya is all about.
Art Studio 8 is an art school for adults and children where you will learn from scratch, improve your skills, and produce paintings in just one lesson.
Studios For Rent Near You
As a place for artistic, cultural, and educational programs where everyone can develop and experience a taste for life Art Space at Bol’shaya Morskaya Ulitsa, 3 does excursions to the Hermitage, art lectures, architectural lectures, culinary nights with Nadezhda Abramova, and creative activities for youngsters.
Framing
When you need local art framing services head to:
- Alpha Art at Trefoleva St House 4 Bld 2
- Bagheera Framing Workshop at Ulitsa Lomonosova 12/66
- Art Deks at 47 Bolshoy Pr
- Vincent at Kirochnaya St 8A
- Art Baguette at Prospekt Nauki 12
Alpha Art was created in 1997 and specializes in the wholesale of wooden and plastic moldings, cardboard for mats, and art supplies.
Bagheera is a full-service firm that excels at the framing of paintings, mirrors, pictures, and art items in your area.
For around 25 years baguette embellishment services for various items and pieces of art ranging from pictures to 3-D sculptures have been provided by Art Dex Framing Workshop.
Baguette frames and suspension systems are available at reasonable costs from Art Baguette whose masters are top-tier specialists with substantial industry knowledge and their consultant designers have good aesthetic taste and invaluable experience designing a wide range of non-standard works including art exhibitions.
In case you might be interested we have also written posts on:
Have Fun Enjoying The Saint Petersburg Art Scene
Well guys, we tried to cover the full art scene near you to the best of our abilities. We listed the best galleries, museums, events, shows, supply stores, dealers, appraisers, walking tours, sculptures, classes, studios, and framers in your area.
If you are still here you probably are a really big fan of the local art scene. Feel free to share your own tips, or to let us know if you noticed anything incorrect in the comments section.
Have fun going to the galleries, museums, buying supplies, or doing anything that has to do with art in Saint Petersburg!
