Small Theatre Museum

The original collector of materials reflecting the course of theatrical life of Moscow of the XIX century was the Office of the Imperial Theatres. The Maly Theatre Museum inherited from it rare materials about the first productions of A.N. Ostrovsky’s plays, posters and photo albums. The Maly Theatre Museum opened in 1927 in the Shchepkin Foyer. Today, the museum is part of the Creative Information Center, an important structural unit of the theater. Its functions have expanded, but the main mission - to preserve the history of the theater - remains unchanged. The museum fund is more than 200 thousand units of storage. Among them are the works of M. Dobuzhinsky, D. Kardovsky, E. Lancere, V. Ryndin, B. Volkov, K. Yuon and other famous artists; unique costumes, personal belongings of famous actors. In an extensive collection of photos and negatives, the life of the theater of the XX-XXI centuries is captured. The scientific library stores directorial and prompter copies of plays. The Theatre Museum has a rare collection of sculptures. A separate collection consists of gifts to the theater. A special place in the museum collection is occupied by rarities - the Golden Sign of the Maly Theater, Benefis wreaths of 1908; congratulatory addresses of A.I. Yuzhin, G.N. Fedotova, V.N. Ryzhova; personal belongings of A.A. Yablochkina, a pen of A.N. Ostrovsky, a glass of M.S. Shchepkin, a letter to K.S. Stanislavsky A.I. Yuzhin, a portrait of M.S. Shchepkin by the artist Nev. In 2001, the museum had a branch - a memorial apartment of the artist and long-term leader of the Maly Theatre, a popular playwright of the late XIX century - A.I. Sumbatov-Yuzhin (1857-1927). The museum-apartment is located at B. Palashevsky Lane, 5/1. In this house, built in 1882, the artist lived for thirty-five years. The museum exposition presents unique materials donated to the Maly Theatre by the widow of the artist M.N. Sumbatova. The opening of the apartment museum took place in 2006. The exposition includes the memorial office of the artist, the living room, the “musical living room” (dining room, converted into an exhibition and theater hall), as well as the former bedroom, turned into a dressing room-cabinet of Alexander Ivanovich in the Maly Theater, where he not only prepared for the stage, but also worked as a director, received visitors. Employees of the museum carry out work on accounting, storage and scientific description of the collection; conduct large publishing, educational and excursion activities. In recent years, the Museum and Information Center has carried out a number of outstanding joint projects outside the theater. A kind of “exit” exhibition hall was the train “Maly Theater”, launched jointly with the Moscow Metro. The exhibition at Sheremetyevo Airport was dedicated to the tour of the Maly Theatre and those performances that were shown in different cities of Russia. In 2019, on Strastny Boulevard and in the MEGA shopping and entertainment center, you could see the exposition “Small Theater Through the Centuries”. To acquaint the audience with a unique collection of costumes, two projects were prepared. The first is virtual, especially for the theater tour, containing several valuable exhibits: costumes by Yermolova, Ostuzhev, Yuri Solomin. They were painted and digitized in 3D space so that the sense of texture of materials and decorations was preserved. The second project combined both the museum and the theater: luxurious costumes from the funds (among them - restored boyar fur coats from historical performances) were tried on and demonstrated by Maly’s artists in a theatrical show.