The Kyrgyz National Museum of Fine Arts named after Gapar Aitiev presented its website — Artmuseum.kg. From now on, art lovers will be able to get acquainted with a rich collection without leaving home, as well as to learn about significant events and news.
The website is unique, because an online art gallery is for the first time presented in Kyrgyzstan, where photographs of more than 4,000 paintings and about 1,000 sculptures from the Museum of Fine Arts’ fund are published.
According to the director Aigul Mambetkazieva, the new website is multifunctional, it includes sections displaying the museum’s activities in various directions: exhibitions, master classes, lectures, round table discussions and presentations.
«The goal of the project is to create conditions for access to the national cultural heritage kept in the funds and collections of the Kyrgyz National Museum of Fine Arts named after Gapar Aitiev through digital technologies. It will contribute to promotion of the fine arts of Kyrgyzstan, will draw attention of the public and the tourist world to the culture of the country,» Aigul Mambetkazieva said.
She added that the digitization project and creation of an online art gallery was initiated by Central Asian Network for Culture and Art NGO and launched with the support of Soros Kyrgyzstan.
The director of the fund, Shamil Ibragimov, believes that the role of international organizations is not to fill the gaps that exist in certain areas. «Their role is to create precedents and new projects, which then the state must pick up and implement further. All digitized paintings have a very high quality. An average size of one picture is from 5 to 10 megabytes. This is a unique opportunity for the people, who want to see not just how a painting looks like, but to consider the nuances of the master’s hands, transition of one color to another,» Shamil Ibragimov said.
Creators of the online gallery noted that the website has been under development, and expressed hope that the project would continue and all 18,000 works of the museum’s fund would be digitized in the future.
