Топик/тема по английскому языку Museums and picture galleries

       Museum is a building where objects illustrating art, history or science are displayed. Museums collect different items. They not only collect but also store, study, systematise and popularise arts, history and other subjects. So museums are divided into museums of Natural History (Zoology Museum in St. Petersburg, Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Museum of Natural History in London), museums of history (National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., The Bath Museum in Bath (England), Ethnography Museum in St. Petersburg, History Museum in Moscow), museums of Science (Polytechnical Museum in Moscow, the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Washington, D.C.) and art museums. The most popular museums are museums of art.
       There are many art museums in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and other Russian cities. The most popular art museum in Moscow is the State Tretyakov Gallery, in Saint-Petersburg it is the State Hermitage.
       The Tretyakov Gallery was founded by Pavel Tretyakov, a Russian merchant. In 1892 he granted his collection of Russian painting to the city of Moscow, but the date of the foundation is 1856, when Pavel bought the first works. Now the museum has 7 departments: the Department of Painting and Sculpture of the XVIII - the first half of the XIX century (portraits of tsars, members of the royal family, officials, other outstanding people of the epoch); the Department of Painting and Sculpture of the second half of the XIX century (genre, landscapes by Pukirev, Perov, Savrasov, Aivazovsky, Kramskoy, Kuindgi, Shishkin, Vasnetsov, Surikov, Repin, Levitan); the Department of'Painting and Sculpture on the border of the XIX and the XX centuries (Vrubel, Rerikh, Nesterov, Serov, Kustodiev); the Department of Drawings (more than 20,000 items); the treasure-house (pieces of jewelry and applied arts - decorations for icons, cups, portraits in medallions, etc.); the Department of Ancient Russian Art (icons); the Temple-Museum (a church which also functions as a museum).
       The Hermitage is one of the largest museums of the world. It hosts many permanent and temporary exhibitions (their number varies from month to month) in more than 400 halls. The Hermitage is a complex of 6 buildings (Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, the Hermitage Theatre and the First Palace of Peter I). Many architects took part in constructing and reconstructing these buildings -Rastrelli (1754-1762), Stasov, Quarenghi, Montferrand, Rossi, and Brallov. The main departments of the museum are: the Winter Palace and the Hermitage (the Main Staircase, beautiful halls, the Military Gallery with portraits of Russian war leaders, the Grand Throne Room and the Hanging Gardens); the Department of History and Art of the Ancient World (Roman statues and busts, Greek vases and statues); the Department of Western European Art (Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch, German, French, English art is represented by canvases and statues; a rich collection of arms and armour. Among English painters we can see Reynolds's pictures «Infant Heracles kills the snakes sent by Hera» (painted in 1786-1788) which was created as an allegory of the power of the young, but strong Russian Empire. Catherine II sent the artist his royalties and a diamond snuff-box with her portrait.
       Two more pictures were ordered to the artist for the Hermitage collection. Gainsborough's work «Lady in Blue» is the most beautiful English painting in the collections of the Hermitage. The works of George Doe, another English painter, are mostly situated in the Military Gallery. The collection of his portraits in the Hermitage surpasses that in Great Britain. The Hermitage hosts a set of dishes by Josiah Wedgewood, an outstanding creator of pieces of ceramics. His «Set with Green Frogs» was made to the Catherine's II order and each piece of 952 items has views of England (more than 1200 landscapes). Each item also has a green frog because the set was made for the palace whose name was translated as « Frogs' moor»); the department of Oriental Art (Egyptian antiques - mummies, sarcophagi, statuettes, papyri, portraits; Chinese pictures and statuettes; Byzantine art and other interesting pieces); the Department of Primitive Art (mostly tools, weapons and pieces of applied art); the Department of Russian Art History (mostly items belonging to the times of Peter I); the First Palace of Peter I is a separate exhibition which was found occasionally while reconstructing the staff dining-room. It was turned into a Department of interiors of Peter's palace and is undoubtedly worth visiting.
       There are many museums which are not usual buildings with pictures covering their walls. For example, Vitoslavlitsy in Novgorod and Kizhy in Karelia are two places where one can see izbas and churches built without nails the way they looked one or two hundred years ago. Another interesting place of this kind is the world famous Stonehenge in Great Britain. It is a World Heritage Site. The scientists still do not know whether it was built as an observatory, a cemetery or a temple. But it is a centre of one of the world's earliest cultures. The place is built of stones which had been brought from a place 385 kilometres away.
       But the most famous are museums situated in London, this greatest attraction for tourists all over the world.
       One of the most popular museums is the Tower of London which used to be a stronghold, a treasure-house, an arsenal, a prison, a mint, an observatory, a zoo and a royal residence. The Tower consists now of several buildings. The first to be built was the White Tower, the walls of which are about 15 feet thick. Queen Ann Boleyn and Elizabeth I were its prisoners. The Tower hosts the National collection of Arms and Crown Jewels. In 1834 the Royal Zoo was taken away, but the ravens stayed in the Tower. The legend says if the ravens leave the Tower, all the state will suffer a terrible depression. All the ravens have names.
       The British Museum was founded in 1753 on the basis of Sir Hans Sloane's collection. It consists of two Departments -the Museum of Mankind and the Natural History Museum. The first of the two includes vast collections of works of art in stone, glass, bronze and gold which illustrate the cultures of the Ancient World. The other department contains 5 principal collections on the history of animals, plants and minerals.