Leo Bardamov`s museum

Leo Bardamov started his creativity with several old paintings by Toni Britova, which he stretched on stretchers, cleaned, restored and hung in the gallery. Some of the old exhibits Lev Lvovich literally dug out of garbage dumps or took from old houses and garages in Buryatia, Irkutsk region. Some items of Buddhist worship were purchased in the TRANS-Baikal territory. When Leo’s house space was no longer enough, the idea to create a museum arose. The main goal of the museum is to popularize the city of Ulan-Ude.

The museum has more than five thousand exhibits. In the six halls of the two-story gallery, you can get acquainted with the rarest books, collections of works by great writers, and see household items of the residents of Verkhneudinsk. Commendatory sheets, seals, and barn books are also available to observe. The Collection of vintage bottles and dishes, including the only “saved” bottle of Kobylkin’s brewery, can be viewed. Seals of tsarist officials and the Buryat elders, a breastplate, household items, and weapons are included in the exhibition. Copies of old maps of Siberia, Lake Baikal, TRANS-Baikal region are available to analyze. The exhibition also presents agricultural machinery, merchant chests, and literature, which was printed with pre-revolutionary alphabet with the endings like “yatyami”.

There is a collection of samovars that were produced in pre-revolutionary times in Russia, scales, on which tea was weighed, and various packages and boxes of herbal drinks in the hall, dedicated to Kyakhta and the Great Tea Rout. There are particularly valuable rarities, which were bought in antique salons, at auctions or purchased abroad – the original seal of the merchant of the first Yumzhap Lumbunov Guild, and a silver saddle, made by Buryat masters two hundred years ago. In 17 halls one can find pieces of material evidence from old Verkhneudinsk, pre-Buddhist and Buddhist Buryat-Mongolia, pre-revolutionary Verkhneudinsk (now called Ulan-Ude). Now the 18th hall, dedicated to the old Mongolian letter, has been opened. There are exhibitions devoted to the Cossacks, Semey, Buryats, Evenki, and Jews. The famous painting “Mary Magdalene”, which belonged to the Shah of Iran, and was later gifted to the famous Buryat ballerina Larisa Sakhyanova, is located on one of the Central walls of the Museum, far from the painting Department, which also has dozens of gorgeous works of art by Buryat artists. One of these pictures is the painting by Philip Baldaev, a famous painter of the Republic (the painting was donated to the Museum by Marina Nikolaeva).