A. P. Gaidar Literary Museum is a museum in Arzamas dedicated to the life and work of the writer Arkady Petrovich Gaidar (Golikov). It opened to visitors on October 29, 1967, with the active participation of the city's young people.[3] After a six-year renovation, the museum resumed operations in its updated form in 2010.[3] It is located at 18A Maxim Gorky Street.[3]

Structure of the institution

The Literary Museum is part of a broader institution, the A. P. Gaidar Literary and Memorial Museum, which unites several separate sites: the A. P. Gaidar memorial house-museum of daily life and the A. M. Gorky memorial museum.[2] The memorial house-museum is located in the neighboring building, a house dating from the 1870s that belonged to a townswoman (meshchanka), A. I. Babaykina; it also opened on October 29, 1967, and re-creates the atmosphere of the Golikov family's life in the early twentieth century in four memorial rooms: the living room, the nursery, the parents' bedroom, and the kitchen.[3]

Exhibition and collections

The permanent exhibition of the literary museum introduces visitors to the writer's ancestry and presents in detail his childhood in Arzamas and his biography as a whole. On display are the recollections and relics of Gaidar's relatives and close friends, along with materials about his family and his literary work.[3] Over the years of its existence, the museum has gathered items that belonged to A. P. Gaidar, P. P. Bazhov, A. N. Strugatsky, and A. M. Gorky, received from the writers' relatives and close associates.[2] In terms of the quantity and significance of its holdings, the Arzamas museum is considered the leading one among all the Gaidar museums in Russia and abroad.[2]

The exhibition also presents materials about the worthy continuers of the Gaidar family name, his son Timur Gaidar and grandson Yegor Gaidar, for whom Arzamas became a family city.[3]

Exhibition activities

In addition to its permanent exhibition, the museum regularly hosts temporary exhibitions. In April 2022, an exhibition titled "Konstantin Paustovsky: Interlocutors of the Heart" opened here.[1] In 2023, an exhibition of Leo Tolstoy's studies from the collection of the Yasnaya Polyana museum-estate was available until May.[1] In May 2024, the exhibition "Arzamas Caramel" opened, recreating the interior of a 19th-century confectionery shop.[1] In May 2025, the exhibition "The Arzamas Ambrotypes of the Sazhin Family" was on view in the museum's halls.[1] The museum takes part in the annual nationwide events "Night of Museums" and "Night of the Arts."[1]

Sources

  1. серафим.рф — A. P. Gaidar Literary Memorial Museum in Arzamas (archive)
  2. nnintur.ru — A. P. Gaidar Literary Memorial Museum: History and Sights (archive)
  3. idemvmuzei.ru — A. P. Gaidar Memorial Home Museum in Arzamas, Nizhny Novgorod Region — Let's Go to the Museum: an aggregator of museums, exhibitions, and tours. (archive)