The City Museum of Local Lore, Muynak
Besides all of it, the attention of visitors to this city starts to be attracted by The City Museum of Local Lore with the exhibits collected in 80s by doctor Eserkepov.
There is a number of very interesting items represented in the exposition of the museum: the history of the region, national-applied art of the people living at the Aral coast, flora and fauna, and also picturesque works of artists Raphael Tevatrosovich Matevosyan and Fahim Yusupovich Madgazin. Both artists have devoted a large quantity of their cloths to the theme of the Amu Darya River and the Aral Sea.
R.T.Matevosyan was born in 1924 in Samarkand. From 1930 to 1962 his family lived in Baku. In 1962 the participant of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. R.T.Matevosyan making a creative trip to Karakalpakstan for the first time gets acquainted with the Aral Sea. In Muynak he gets acquainted with life of fishermen and for the first time lives with them in the sea on fishing seiners. Since that time he, getting acquainted with life and heavy work of fishermen and local residents, gets involved with the Aral tragedy. The huge creative part of the artist's life is entirely devoted to the Aral tragedy and people living here. He lived and worked on fishing boats, slept in sailor's bunk rooms. Wrote etudes of yet unknown places and at the same time held the first personal exhibitions on boats for the sea workers. Together with geologists he flied to the Ustyurt Plateau and islands surrounding the sea.
In 1967 this great artisan could see the beginning of the sea shrinking. He has illustrated it in his canvases "The Sea has left", "The Vessel in sand" painted from life. And, thus, the new cycle of works with the pictures of perishing of the Aral begins with the following canvases: "The Moorage in sand", "Laid up for eternity", "Aground", "Hope". Unfortunately, up to this day all this history has remained only in R.T.Matevosyan's canvases.
His works were exposed in many countries of the world and have been apprehended with the great enthusiasm.
Today many young inhabitants do not know how the Aral Sea looked. Series of pictures by Matevosyan which is the only one in its kind and unique in the world narrates about transformation of the blue and rich Aral into the lifeless desert which is often called today as "The Aralkum".
The works by F.J.Madgazin written in unique color and a stunning genre lure the visitors' glances. His pictures are sated by lyrical and quiet tones. Such works as "The Dawn over the Amu Darya", "The Amu Darya coast" and "Moonlight night" are rich with poetic beauty, and through these pictures the artist shows picturesque coloring and harmony of the Amu Darya coast.
Considerable quantity of his works is devoted to the nature, daily life of the sea workers and the coast of the Amu-Darya River. These are "Landing stage in Khojeyli", "Winter", "Urga", "Kattagar", "Port Uchsay", "The Aral sea", "Muynak", "The Muynak fish-canning factory".
Through the pictures of artists visitors of the museum can get acquainted with the history of this place, with its past and present.