A year of openings at the regional museum: from Russian America to children’s archaeology

New exhibitions, a children’s centre, an interactive icebreaker and a bus route to Baikal — what is new at the museum of local history.

2025 and 2026 were busy years for the N. N. Muravyov-Amursky Irkutsk Regional Museum of Local History.

Exhibitions

In May 2026 “Russian America. The Beginning” opened in the Window to Asia department, with fragments of a Steller’s sea cow skeleton and objects from the 18th–19th centuries; it runs until 1 March 2027. The Museum Studio showed “Big History”, an exhibition about the city’s main street.

For children

On 10 September 2026 the “ARCHAEOLOGY” centre opened in the Window to Asia department: the museum’s collections hold about 300,000 archaeological items, from the Palaeolithic to the Iron Age.

The icebreaker and Baikal

In 2025 the museum’s icebreaker branch, the Angara, received an interactive engine room, and in June 2026 the museum launched the bus tour “Irkutsk — Bolshoye Goloustnoye” via Kochergat with its wooden church.

Sources (in Russian): IrkutskMedia, 17 May 2026; Glagol, 28 April 2026; IRK.ru, 10 January 2026; Oblastnaya Gazeta, 21 July 2025; Teleinform, 25 May 2026.