The story
The collection began with 72 canvases picked out in Moscow. The painter Semyon Chuikov, born in Kyrgyzstan and by then an established name, petitioned the education commissariat for founding works and chose them himself from the Tretyakov Gallery's Russian holdings of the late 18th to early 20th centuries. The picture gallery opened in Frunze, now Bishkek, on 1 January 1935.
Around 18,000 items have accumulated since, roughly 4,000 of them paintings. The Russian side grew out of that first shipment and takes in Shishkin, Konstantin Korovin, Pavel Kuznetsov and Konstantin Yuon. The Kyrgyz side is the museum's own subject, beginning with Chuikov and with Gapar Aitiev, the first professionally trained Kyrgyz painter, whose name the museum now carries.
The building on Abdrakhmanov Street dates from 1974, and a large part of it is given to felt shyrdak rugs, embroidery, silver jewellery, saddlery and a yurt, the household art that Kyrgyz families made and used rather than exhibited.
