By Ian Claytor
Photo Zoya Sitnikova
For those visitors with time on their hands, Bishkek has a number of museums. Some of them are small and receive few visitors, but you will receive a warm welcome in all of them. In most of them, the displays are in Russian and or Kyrgyz only.
A city tour can include a visit to one or more of the museums. The most commonly visited ones are the Historical Museum (formerly the Lenin Museum) in the main square and the Museum of Fine Arts.
It is possible to arrange special visits to most museums (in the past we have been asked to provide visits to others such as the M.V. Frunze Museum, the Mineralogical Museum, the Ala National Park Museum and the Sadykov Museum), which include talks and presentations by the museum's expert staff about some of the more interesting exhibits. As most of the staff do not speak English or other foreign languages it may be necessary to take a guide/interpreter.
The most famous museums are:
The Historical Museum Ala Too Square Tue-Sun 10:00-15:00
This used to be called the Lenin Museum and some older residents still refer to it as such. The ground floor houses temporary exhibits but the permanent exhibits depict the natural and political history of the country and its Soviet heritage. There is a statue of Lenin leading the revolutionary masses and a ceiling painting of a wedding party attended by the melting pot of Soviet nationalities. The historical museum was set up in 1926 in the childhood home of Mikhail Frunze (now preserved in the Frunze Museum) then in 1937 it was transferred to what is now the Friendship building (see Zoological Museum) before moving to its present home in the 1980s.
Exhibits include stones with rock paintings from Simile-Tash; armour and everyday objects dating from the Bronze Age; discoveries from archaeological excavations such as early nomadic adornments dating from the 1st to the 5th centuries (AD), including golden artifacts from the Chui Valley's Shushing tomb; the Turkic stone culture collection; Talas stones with runic lettering; ceramic, glass and metal articles; and numerous ancient coins. The museum has rich ethnographic collections of objects from the late 19th and early 20th centuries which include articles made of felt, wool, chiy, leather and wood made by Kyrgyz artisans, collections of traditional Kyrgyz embroidery, pile and non-pile weaving, national dress, women's adornments, and highly artistic articles of horse harness. Many visitors also find of great interest materials from the Soviet period such as the collections of documents, photographs, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and gifts presented to the Kyrgyz Republic by foreign governments.
The Museum of Fine Arts 196 Sovietskaya Tue-Sun : 09:00-17:00
Dedicated to Kyrgyz folk and applied arts and Russian and Soviet Art, the museum began as the State Picture Gallery and was located in St Nicholas Church in Oak Park. The church now houses the Gallery of the Artists' Union. The present building was built in 1974 as one of the projects in the grand scheme for improving the capital, and features a yurt and a permanent exhibition of shyrdak and other traditional crafts. The full collection numbers some 17,500 works of art: paintings, drawings, sculptures and examples of traditional decorative and applied art. There are also several galleries of paintings from the Soviet period, a room of replicas of Egyptian, Greek and classical western sculptures, and a collection of linocuts based on the Manas epic by Hertzen. The museum also houses temporary exhibits.
Frunze Museum 346 Frunze - Tue-Fri : 09:00-17:00; Sat-Sun : 09:00-16:00
The museum traces the life and career of Mikhail Frunze. The house in which he was thought to have been born and brought up is preserved on the ground floor (there is some doubt as to whether this is the right house but it is typical of the period) and there is an exhibition of the achievements of the city and Kirgizia during the Soviet period.
Less well known are:
The Tinibek Sadykov Museum Togolok Moldo Mon-Fri : 09:00-12:00 + 13:00-16:00
This museum contains some of the smaller works of the Kyrgyz monumental sculptor Tinibek Sadykov some of whose larger works can be found in the Philharmonia, The Martyrs to the Revolution at the corner of Prospect Chui and Sovietskaya and in Victory Square.
The Aaly Tokombaev Museum 109 Chuikova Mon-Fri : 09:00-17:00
Tokombaev was a famous Kyrgyz akin (bard), poet and composer and his house has been turned into a museum dedicated to his life and work. He helped to standardize written Kyrgyz using a modified alphabet. There is an exhibition dedicated to the exodus of many Kyrgyz to China in 1916 following the uprising against the Russians. (a statue of Tokombaev can be seen to the south of the Fine Arts Museum).
The Gaspar Aitiev Studio on the corner of Tynystanova and Chokmo-rova.
Aitiev was a painter and sculptor and the museum is housed in what was his studio and contains some of his work including landscapes, sketches in charcoal and pastels and sculptures from driftwood.
The Semen Chuykov Museum 87 Chuykova
The Open Air Sculpture Museum in Oak Park
To mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Kyrgyz Republic in 1984, sculptors from all over the Soviet Union were invited to submit pieces under the title “Peace and Labour” and their work was exhibited in the park. Many of the metal pieces, including a bronze bust of Yuri Gargarin, have since disappeared plundered, stolen, for their scrap value.
The Toktogul Literary Museum 109 Toktogula Mon-Fri 08:00-12:30 + 13:30-17:30
Dedicated to Kyrgyz literature this museum has many papers, photos and memorabilia.
Mineralogical Museum 164 Propect Chui Mon-Fri : 09:00-15:30
Contains examples of minerals found throughout the country.
The Ivan Panfilov Museum Toktogula, next to the Semetey hotel on the grounds of the National Guards base. It opened after reconstruction in June 2004.
The Zoological Museum 78 Pushkin Street Mon-Fri 10:00-17:00
Contains displays of stuffed animals (reptiles, birds, mammals, invertebrates) native to Kyrgyzstan - and some more exotic - including a golden eagle, a porcupine, a jackal, a mountain goat being attacked by a fierce snow leopard, dozens of birds, mammals, fish, amphibians, reptiles and other stuffed animals. There are pictures depicting dinosaurs and pangolins and portraits of famous scientists who devoted themselves to studying the flora and fauna of this mountainous country, including Semenov-Tianshansky and Przheval-sky. One section of the museum serves as a research laboratory and next to it there will be a live corner with a pool of water, which will house a real anaconda. The collection was started in 1927 by the zoologist Dementiev together with the taxidermist Vasiliev who led scientific investigations in almost all regions of the republic.
The building (Friendship House Don Druzhby), was the first seat of the republican government built by the Interhelpa volunteers in 1927, (there is a time capsule in the cornerstone), but when the Supreme Soviet building in the old square was completed this became the Historical Museum. The Museum was renovated in 2004.
The National Bank Museum
Contains examples of money - coins, banknotes, treasury documents - both real and counterfeit.
The Ala Archa National Park Museum a few kilometers inside the park.
The two-storey building houses the administration offices of the park and has a room dedicated to examples of the wildlife found here and at Issyk Kul.
The National Library - although not strictly a museum, the library has become one of the major repositories of culture in the country since it was founded in 1934. It moved into its present home on Sovietskaya in 1984 to mark its fiftieth anniversary. The library collects copies of all literature published in the country, as well as a variety of publications from other CIS countries and further afield. There are a total of over six million documents, (books, magazines, newspapers, sheet music, records, patent and other reference documents and some 97,000 doctoral dissertations, plus the private papers of several prominent people) in 89 languages
including a copy of the first book ever to be printed in Russian, Apostol, which was printed in Moscow in 1564. The library adds some 120 thousand items to its collection every year.
Interestingly, there are books in Kyrgyz written in Arabic, Latin and Cyrillic scripts reflecting the various changes that have taken place in the transformation from an oral, nomadic tradition.
It also houses a number of exhibitions and conferences every year.
Interestingly, there are books in Kyrgyz written in Arabik, Latin and Cyrillic scripts reflecting the various changes that have taken place in the transformation from an oral, nomadic tradition. It also houses a number of exhibitions and conferences every year. Unfortunately, closed at the moment for renovations are.
