The Balakhna Museum of History and Art (known until the 2010s as the Balakhna Local History Museum) is a municipal cultural institution (MBUK) opened on November 7, 1927, in the city of Balakhna, Nizhny Novgorod Region. One of the oldest museums in the region, it preserves materials relating to the history of the city and Balakhninsky District — one of the oldest urban settlements in the Nizhny Novgorod land, historically known for salt-making, brick and tile production, lace-making, and shipbuilding.[1]

History and Location

For more than 50 years after its founding, the museum was housed on the grounds of the Church of the Intercession, dating from the second half of the 17th century, which forms part of the ensemble of the former Pokrovsky Muzhskoy Monastery.[1] The church building was subsequently transferred to the Orthodox Church, and the museum relocated. The Church of St. Nicholas, built in 1552, in which the museum's reserve collections were stored during the final years before its handover to the Orthodox Church, is one of only nine surviving stone tent-roofed churches of the 16th century in Russia; the official transfer of the church took place on September 9.[2][3] In November 2012, the complex was given a merchant mansion from the second half of the 19th century — the "Plotnikov House" — which had belonged to first-guild merchant and town mayor Aleksandr Alekseyevich Plotnikov. The building is a listed architectural monument of the Eclectic period. In 2013, the building underwent restoration (replacement of inter-floor beams and flooring, restoration of the stucco decoration), after which permanent exhibitions totalling 425.4 m² opened to the public.[1]

Branches and Exhibitions

During the 2010s, the institution was reorganized into a museum historical and art complex comprising four branches.[1]

"The Plotnikov House" — the main building with permanent exhibitions: "Archaeology" (prehistoric society, the ancient world of birds and animals in the Balakhna region before and after the Ice Age); "The Balakhna Fortress," featuring a model of a wooden fortification wall reconstructed from historical descriptions, since nothing of the actual fortress has survived[3]; "Balakhna — A District Town"; "Weapons"; "Icons of Balakhna" — a collection of icons by royal icon painters of the 17th century, discovered in the city's ancient and ruined churches; and "Balakhna Lace."[1]

The exhibition devoted to salt-making recreates the history of one of the city's principal trades. In medieval Russia, Balakhna was a major center of the salt industry; according to tradition, the exploitation of salt springs here began after the conquest of Novgorod the Great by Ivan III in 1478, when Novgorodian exiles were resettled in the area. The brine lay at a depth of roughly 50 meters in layers of bluish shale and was distinguished by a particular bitterness. The exhibits include samples of brine and salt, tools used in its extraction, and salt pipes — virtually the only surviving physical evidence of the trade.[1][3]

The "Balakhna Lace" exhibition presents lace from the 19th century onward, made on bobbins in the "Balakhon manner" of multi-pair braiding (shawls, scarves, blouses, headscarves). A separate section is devoted to lace from the Soviet period (1969–1993). According to legend, Catherine II commissioned silk lace with red roses from local craftswomen; the historically documented fact is that Balakhna lace adorned the wedding dress of Queen Victoria of England in 1840.[1]

"The Kuzma Minin Museum" — the only museum in Russia dedicated to this historical figure; it is located in the multipurpose complex "Dom Moskvy" (House of Moscow), gifted to the residents of Balakhna by the Moscow city government. The exhibition covers the history of the Second People's Militia of 1612 and its leaders — Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky — and displays original artifacts from the 17th–19th centuries.[1]

"The Khudyakov Estate" — a complex reflecting the everyday life of the merchant class; in addition to the main house it includes a service wing, a wooden stable, and a park with century-old linden trees. The estate was built in the 1870s–1880s by Alexander Alexandrovich Khudyakov, a first-guild merchant who traded wholesale in grain, built barges, and served for a time as the mayor of Balakhna; having no direct heirs, he bequeathed the estate to the diocese, and after his death it housed a shelter for elderly clergy, then after the revolution the building was occupied in succession by the Cheka, an orphanage, and a kindergarten. The main house has retained its original interior finishes: tiled stoves, antique parquet flooring, plaster moldings on the ceilings and walls, and a staircase with oak banisters; the building is constructed from different materials — the first floor is of stone, the second of wood — yet both are concealed beneath a richly decorative eclectic façade combining Classicism and Baroque.

In the 2000s, the estate's main building became a branch of the Balakhna Local History Museum; under the regional program "Development of Culture in the Nizhny Novgorod Region in 2006–2010," more than one million rubles from the regional budget were allocated for façade restoration in 2007 and around two million in 2008. Chimney caps, a balustrade, and decorative vases lost during the Soviet era were restored, and the roof's historic configuration was returned.[4][4][4] The estate houses a workshop for making Zhbannikovo clay whistles (hereditary craftsman Evgeniy Fomich Timofeyev).[1]

The Black Swan Glass Museum is the fourth branch of the complex.[1]

Collections

The museum's collection includes unique holdings of Old Russian painting, wooden sculptures of the 19th century (including an 18th-century wooden sculpture of Jesus)[3], examples of Balakhna lace, objects related to salt-making, and exhibits connected with shipbuilding — in particular, a model of a belyana, a wooden river-drift vessel widely used on the Volga in the 19th century.[3] Among the rare exhibits is paraphernalia of the Union of the Russian People dating from 1905.[3]

References

Sources

  1. master-raduga.nnov.ru — MBUK "Balakhna Museum Historical and Art Complex". Balakhna — MASTER-RADUGA WORKSHOP (archive)
  2. nne.ru — St. Nicholas Church, built in 1552, in which the reserve collections of the Balakhna Local History Museum were stored in the final years before the handover to the Orthodox Church (archive)
  3. kirpet.eu — Balakhna — the history of one city — The Blog (archive)
  4. gttp.ru — The estate of merchant Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Khudyakov was built in the 1870s–1880s on the bank of the Volga, at the point where the Netechi River flows into it. Khudyakov was a first-guild merchant