The Museum of Local Lore of Magnitogorsk, a city that is the center of domestic ferrous metallurgy, was founded in August 1944. Today, the exposure area of this institution is 2.2 thousand square meters. meters, in its funds more than 100 thousand exhibits are stored.
These, of course, are collections dedicated to the city-forming enterprise, Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK), its history and products. In addition, this is a collection of objects that tell about the life of citizens.
History of the museum
During the Great Patriotic War, many enterprises were evacuated here, which urgently deployed their workshop equipment for the production of products necessary for the front. The city known throughout the country with its metallurgical plant, with Magnitnaya Mountain, rich in deposits of iron ore, which has taken 34 more heavy industry enterprises into its territory, has become the main producer of metal, from ordinary steel to high-strength armor.
The collected material on the establishment in 1929 and the subsequent rapid development of Magnitogorsk gave impetus to the creation of the first museum in the city.
“History of Magnitogorsk - the history of the country”
The permanent exhibition of the local history museum in Magnitogorsk with the same name was opened in 2002. It was created for the 70th anniversary of the MMK. Four thousand exhibits, located on an area of 600 square meters. meters, they talk about the life of the Ural Cossacks, about the best pages of the Soviet period of our country and the city of metallurgists.
Guides' stories about how the region’s industry was created, about the exploit of the home front workers during the war, about the place of Magnitogorsk in modern Russia, come from different generations of the city and tourists from other cities.
Modern museum
Today, within the walls of the Magnitogorsk Museum of History and Local Lore, not only educational work is being conducted. Great attention is paid to scientific issues, expeditionary research. Employees are in close working contact with specialists from different areas, participate in expeditions of archaeological, ethnographic and geological directions. This makes it possible to replenish the museum's collections.
In particular, ceramic and bronze vessels, stone axes, arrowheads were found during excavations in the vicinity of the city. The archaeological department has artifacts from different eras: from the Paleolithic to the Middle Ages.
The Department of Nature owns samples of the bowels of Mount Magnetic. In addition to ore-bearing rocks, widely represented in the expositions, the collection contains a huge collection of ornamental stones.
The flora of the region is widely represented: steppe, peculiar only to this area, and relict, preserved from ancient times. The Museum of Local Lore of Magnitogorsk makes out the main expositions and temporary exhibitions by stuffed animals of this area. In the southern Urals live moose, bears, wild boars, lynxes, many different birds.
The collections of the museum contain private collections donated to him, collected at different times by ordinary citizens.
The museum staff, realizing that the main asset of the city are people, from the first days of the institution's existence, store information about the Honorary Citizens of the city. Of course, these ranks also include the Heroes of the Soviet Union and Socialist Labor, honored workers in education, medicine, and culture.
Museum exhibitions
Currently, the Museum of Local Lore Magnitogorsk has several exhibitions of various subjects. Due to insufficient space, only five to seven percent of the exhibits stored in the collections participate in the exposition work. To demonstrate as much material as possible, the museum practices the organization of exhibitions.
Young people, in addition to history, are interested in upcoming sports and championships. Veterans are happy to attend excursions that tell about the activities of fellow-partisans of the Second World War. Schoolchildren come to study the animal world and minerals of the Southern Urals. And everyone, without exception, is interested in how the city is connected with space.
Museum-apartment of B. A. Ruchev
Among the attractions of Magnitogorsk, special attention is paid to the city's only literary museum, opened in 1975, two years after the poet’s death, on the basis of the museum of local lore.
The initiator of the exhibition was the poet’s wife, who donated personal items, archival documents, photographs, and a writer’s library to the city. The museum was created in the last apartment of the poet, where he returned after exile and rehabilitation, and where he lived until his death. During the life of the owner, these friends spent a lot of time in these rooms, the literary community of Magnitogorsk, and writers of the region. Here was born the poem "Lyubava", for which the author was awarded the State Prize of the RSFSR.
12 thousand exhibits after re-exposure in 1993 tell about previously forbidden topics. Namely: about the Gulag and repressions, about the writers who were arrested and persecuted, about the previously unknown side of the life of Magnitogorsk. The number of people who want to go on an excursion to this apartment, located in an ordinary residential building, and their reviews of the museum of local lore of Magnitogorsk indicate the continued interest of citizens in the activities and life of their fellow countryman.
