Penza Museum of Folk Art

The Museum of Folk Art is located in a unique building of the city estate of the Penza timber manufacturer Stepan Lavrentievich Tyurin (1846-1911), which is a regional monument of wooden architecture of the middle of the XIX century.

The two-storey wooden house with a mezzanine was restored in the 70s of the XX century by the famous team of wood carvers - the Sorokin brothers (Nikolai Efimovich, Vasily Efimovich, Ivan Efimovich) from the village of Russian Kameshkir of the Penza region. After the repair, the building appeared in all the splendor of the decoration of the facade, generously decorated with openwork lining of propyl lace.

On January 7, 1975, an exhibition hall was opened at the Penza regional branch of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (VOOPIK), whose leadership was located in this building. Almost immediately, the exhibition hall became known as a museum of folk art, although it did not have the status of a museum.

In January 1992, the exhibition hall of the Penza Regional Council VOOPIC was legally granted the status of the Penza Regional Museum of Folk Art. The fund collection of the museum, formed in the 1990s, included samples of various areas of folk art: carving and painting on wood, dowsing, carpet weaving, down knitting, ceramics, artistic forging, embroidery, weaving.

Since April 2017, the museum and exhibition center of the Penza Regional House of Folk Art has become a department of the Penza Museum of Local History and is called the Museum of Folk Art.