Marc Chagall Museum
The artist's childhood house on Pokrovskaya Street and an Art Centre holding his graphic work.
Marc Chagall was born in Vitebsk in 1887 and spent his youth in the brick house on Pokrovskaya Street that his father built in the early 1900s. The museum was founded in 1992 and the house opened to visitors in 1997, furnished to suggest the family's rooms and the yard described in the artist's memoir My Life. Photographs, documents and reproductions set out the Vitebsk years, including the period when Chagall ran the People's Art School in the city after 1918.
The second site, the Art Centre on Sovetskaya Street, holds the collection of original graphic work: lithographs and etchings including the illustrations to Gogol's Dead Souls, the Bible series and The Twelve Tribes of Israel, together with later colour lithographs. The centre also runs a programme of temporary shows devoted to the Vitebsk avant-garde and to contemporary artists, and hosts the Chagall readings, an annual academic conference held in the city.
Highlights
- The Chagall family house of the early 1900s on Pokrovskaya Street
- Graphic series including Dead Souls and The Twelve Tribes of Israel
- Art Centre on Sovetskaya Street with changing exhibitions
- Sculpture of the artist in the garden behind the house
