The formation of the art collection of the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore began in the 1930s. In 1937, the first art department, which had more than 50 paintings, was opened. In the 1960s, an art gallery was opened at the museum, and it became a center for city residents to get to know the artistic heritage of Ukraine and the world.

During this period, the museum received works that returned the legacy of Mariupol’s famous native son, landscape painter Arkhyp Ivanovych Kuindzhi, to his home city. In particular, the sketch “Red Sunset” and the studies “Elbrus” and “Autumn. Crimea” came from the russian museum in St. Petersburg, where they had been stored for a long time, though they historically belonged to the creative heritage of our city. They were presented along with the works of A. I. Kuindzhi’s contemporaries that the museum received from the Tretyakov Gallery, which allowed visitors to see the broader artistic context of the era. An important addition was a rare portrait of Metropolitan Ignatius donated by the Odesa Historical Museum, which reflected the spiritual and cultural heritage of the Nadazov region.

The collection was supplemented with other notable works: Ivan Aivazovsky’s “Near the Shores of the Caucasus”, Mykola Dubovsky’s “Sea”, Lev Lagorio’s sketch “The Sea”, and Ivan Shyshkin’s etchings. At the same time, a significant part of the collection consisted of canvases of Ukrainian and contemporary Mariupol artists, which emphasized the city’s connection with national culture.

On October 29, 2010, the grand opening of the A. I. Kuindzhi Art Museum took place on Heorhiivska Street. The first floor housed an exposition dedicated to the life and work of the master, while the second featured exhibition halls where works of modern artists were displayed.

Thus, the museum’s art collection was not only a collection of valuable exhibits, but also a symbol of the return and revival of the cultural identity of Mariupol and the Nadazov region.

The archaeological collection has traditionally occupied an important place in the museum’s collection. The holdings contained unique complexes from the Amvrosiivska Paleolithic site, materials from burial mounds in the Northern Pryazov region, a Golden Horde burial ground in the Vodiana ravine, and the Zaporozhian fortification of Kalmius. The collection was adorned with 46 stone statues, mainly from the Middle Ages.

Among the museum’s most prized possessions is a unique burial complex dating back to the 5th millennium BCE, which has gone down in history as the Mariupol Neolithic Burial Ground. It was discovered in 1930 during the laying of blast furnace №1 at the Azovstal plant. Research was conducted under the guidance of archaeologist Professor M. O. Makarenko from Kyiv. Among the expedition members were museum staff. As a result of the archaeological expedition, the museum’s holdings were expanded by samples of stone tools and ornaments made of boar tusks, bones, and shells. At that time, two burial sites were excavated in their entirety. The many-ton crates were hauled to the museum on carts and brought into the exhibition through a window on the second floor. These unique archaeological finds were destroyed as a result of russian bombing in the spring of 2022.

The museum collections of documentary and photo materials were the largest in terms of quantity. Among the documents preserved in the collection, the most valuable were a complaint letter from Catherine II and a confirmation letter from Alexander I, which attested to the deportation of Greeks from the Crimean Peninsula, as well as documents from the Mariupol Greek Court – a local self-governing body from the late 18th to mid-19th centuries, and samples of business papers from the 19th to 20th centuries.

The photographs, negatives on glass and film dating from the second half of the 19th century, depicted nature, historical and cultural events, and the economic development of the city and region.

An important part of the collection consisted of postcards with views of Mariupol, first printed at the end of the 19th century. The streets and squares of the city and its cultural and educational institutions are reflected in these photographic artifacts, which serve as indispensable illustrative material for the chronicle of the city.

Substantive collections of documentary sources made it possible to thoroughly study the history and development of Mariupol starting from the end of the 18th century.

The ethnographic collection began to take shape in the very first years of the museum’s existence. It consisted mainly of items representing the unique cultural heritage of the Mariupol Greeks. Field research conducted as early as the 1920s and 1930s allowed the collection of Greek fabrics, carpets, runners, Easter eggs, samples of ritual bread products, women’s ornaments, wedding clothing, amulets, church utensils, tools and implements for work, and ceramic and copper dishes.

In 1928, a traveling exhibition of the ethnographic materials of the Greek collection caused a sensation in Kharkiv at the Exhibition of Achievements of National Policy in Ukraine. Soon after, at an international exhibition in Cologne, the collection of Greek embroidery met with great success and interest among art experts.

Over time, the museum’s collection was enriched with items of Ukrainian culture, as Ukrainians had lived in the Mariupol region since the Cossack era. Ukrainian embroidered shirts, skirts, and towels were distinguished by their symbolic depth. At the beginning of the 19th century, German and Jewish agricultural colonists began to make their way to the region. Their way of life and cultural manifestations also found a place in the museum collection.

Ethnographic items of the region’s main ethnic groups were exhibited at the Museum of Folk Life, which operated since 1989 in a separate late 19th century building on Heorhiivska Street in Mariupol.

The museum notaphily collection presented paper money from various times. The special branch of history that includes notaphily has made it possible to explore certain aspects of the history of monetary circulation in the region through particular monetary artifacts.

The collection featured banknotes and bonds from the mid-19th century to the financial system of modern Ukraine, as well as payment and credit notes issued by local enterprises in the 1920s. The most interesting examples were banknotes of the russian empire, the Ukrainian People’s Republic, the USSR, independent Ukraine, and foreign countries, from the period of the First World War, revolutions and struggles for liberation, and the Nazi occupation. These museum items aroused interest with their historical value and artistic design and were actively used in expositions and displays.

The numismatic collection began to take shape at the time that the Oleksandrivska Male Gymnasium was operating in Mariupol, and later became part of the local museum’s holdings. The collection preserved coins from the Roman Empire, Byzantium, ancient cities of the Northern Black Sea region, the muscovite state, the russian empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Austria-Hungary, and the USSR.

The practical significance of numismatics in museum curators’ research work went far beyond collecting, systematizing, and studying coins. These artifacts were, first and foremost, an important source for studying the history of coinage, and they were examined as evidence of the internal and external ties of the Nadazov region, the development of crafts, monetary circulation, and commodity production from various times.

Awards, commemorative medals, chest badges, tokens, and various badges from the 19th-20th centuries formed the museum’s phaleristic collection. Among them, the most valuable were award and commemorative medals from the Crimean War of 1853-1856, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, and St. George’s Crosses from the First World War. A significant part of the collection consisted of Soviet military and labor orders and medals from the period of 1920-1990.

Studying items from the phaleristic collection in the museum environment provides an insight into the development of the award system, its symbolism, the history of local and regional enterprises and institutions, and individual facts from the lives of citizens.