Art museums and galleries as components of urban cultural life in the Irkutsk region (on the materials of the museum specialists' works)

Art museums and galleries in the Irkutsk region are places of concentration of the people who are interested in the art and creativity of domestic masters of the prerevolutionary, Soviet and modern periods. The institutions act as centers for disseminating knowledge about the achievements in the museum development and existing directions of the schools of painting. As part of the research, the museum specialists' works on the history of creation and development of art museums and galleries are examined. The plots are presented to describe the changing attitude of scientific and creative collectives towards art collections, museum spaces as centers of cultural life in the Irkutsk region. The notes' fragments and museum specialists' observations concerning the spatial organization are presented. The museum staff is noted to study the exhibits and collections which became the basis for holding thematic exhibitions. The necessity to support the activities to study the history of museums in the field of art and preservation of artistic heritage is confirmed.