The Kerch Art Gallery is located on Lenin Square at the foot of the Great Mithridates Staircase. The house where the art gallery is located was built in the 19th century in the classical style. Here you can see an exhibition dedicated to the ancient Panticapaeum, as well as a cycle of paintings by the artist Nikolay Bout "Ajimushkai. 1942".
The Kerch Art Gallery is named after Bout. The permanent exhibition of the gallery exhibits paintings by Nikolay Bout dedicated to the defenders in the Ajimushkai quarries. He worked on these paintings in the 1960s, organized exhibitions in different cities of the USSR, and since 1985 they have been stored in the Kerch Art Gallery.
The Germans seized Crimea in 1941. In January 1942, Soviet troops recaptured the Kerch Peninsula, but in April German troops re-captured Kerch. Most of the troops crossed the Kerch Strait, but 10 thousand people from the cover companies remained in Kerch and went to the Ajimushkai quarries. There they defended for a long 170 days. Not a single person from these 10 thousand surrendered, despite the most difficult conditions of defense and gas attacks. The defenders` faces are covered with black soot, as they made homemade splinters of rubber, which were very smoked.
An interesting exhibition of the Kerch Art Gallery is dedicated to the era of the Bosporan Kingdom. Here you can see not only paintings recreating the images of the ancient city of the 5th century BC. In the Kerch Art Gallery there are artifacts found during excavations in Panticapaeum and other Greek polis that surrounded it.
The art gallery has works by Crimean artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, exhibitions are constantly organized. One exhibition is dedicated to the Church of John the Baptist, which is the oldest church in Russia. It was built in the 10th century, but the walls and foundation of the 6th century temple are partially preserved in it. There is a diorama where you can see what the church looked like in the 19th century, as well as after reconstruction in the 20th century, when the church returned the historical appearance of the ancient temple.
