Imperial Director of the Russian Museum

The exhibition is held in the Garden Vestibule of the Mikhailovsky Palace.

To mark its 130th anniversary, the Russian Museum is opening an exhibition dedicated to Grand Duke George Mikhailovich Romanov, the first Director of the Russian Museum, an art collector, and a distinguished numismatist.

Through archival materials and photographs, visitors will not only become acquainted with the life and achievements of the Grand Duke but will also be able to see how the history of the Russian Museum began and how its collection, currently numbering over 440,000 items, was formed during its initial years. George Mikhailovich was a genuine admirer of Russian history and art, with a particular passion for Russian numismatics. In 1909, he bequeathed his collection of coins and medals to the Russian Museum, which at the time was one of the largest in the country. The exhibition in the Garden Vestibule of the Mikhailovsky Palace provides visitors with a rare opportunity to view items from the numismatic collection, including 19th-century silver medals related to the history of the museum.

Grand Duke George Mikhailovich (1863–1919) was the third son of Grand Duke Michael Nikolayevich and Grand Duchess Olga Feodorovna, a grandson of Emperor Nicholas I, and a relative of Emperor Nicholas II.

In 1895, Grand Duke George Mikhailovich was appointed by his nephew Emperor Nicholas II, as the Imperial Director of the Emperor Alexander III Russian Museum, a position he held until March 1917. The role of the Imperial Director in the history of the museum cannot be overestimated: he oversaw the growth of the collection, the photographic documentation of museum items, cataloguing, and the creation of exhibitions.

Grand Duke George Mikhailovich developed a passion for numismatics at a young age and devoted much of his life to collecting, studying, and systematising coins and medals. In 1886, the first numismatic work by Grand Duke George Mikhailovich was published, entitled Description and Illustration of Some Rare Coins from My Collection, and beginning in 1888, under his patronage and with his financial support, the major multi-volume publication Corpus of Russian Coins of the 18th–19th Centuries (1888–1914) began to be issued. The numismatic collection of Grand Duke George Mikhailovich was assembled over three decades. Unfortunately, during the First World War, the collection was lost, and currently part of it is housed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. (USA). After 1917, the numismatic collection of the Russian Museum had to be formed anew.

Today, the numismatic collection of the Russian Museum comprises approximately 73,000 items, including coins, commemorative medals, banknotes, securities, awards, badges, tokens, seals, wax impressions, and much more. The exhibition in the Garden Vestibule of the Mikhailovsky Palace features items that are rarely displayed at exhibitions and provides an opportunity to explore the history of the first years of the country’s largest museum of national art through a selection of historical photographs, manuscripts, and archival materials.