Abilkhan Kasteyev National Museum of Arts
Kazakhstan's largest art museum, holding some 25,000 works of Kazakh, Russian, European and Asian art.
The museum opened in Almaty in September 1976 and is named after Abilkhan Kasteyev, regarded as the founder of Kazakh painting. It is the largest art museum in the country, holding roughly 25,000 works across painting, sculpture, graphic art, applied and folk art. The collection was assembled from earlier Almaty art holdings and from transfers made by museums elsewhere in the Soviet Union, and it continues to grow through purchases, commissions and gifts from artists and their families.
Permanent displays are arranged by school and period. Kazakh sections cover nineteenth-century steppe scenes, the Soviet decades and contemporary practice, with rooms devoted to Kasteyev himself and to figures such as Sergey Kalmykov and Gulfairus Ismailova. Separate galleries present Russian art, Western European painting from Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany and England, and decorative art from India, China, Korea and Japan. The museum mounts dozens of temporary exhibitions each year and runs a restoration workshop and an education programme.
Highlights
- About 25,000 works, the largest art collection in Kazakhstan
- Galleries devoted to Abilkhan Kasteyev and Kazakh painting
- Western European and Russian painting displays
- Applied and folk art including carpets, jewellery and felt
