Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) – Director of the Uffizi Gallery Eike Schmidt made an official visit to Uzbekistan to sign a Memorandum on the preparation of an exhibition in Florence

The visit was organized as part of the cooperation between the Art and Culture Development Foundation under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan and the Uffizi Gallery on the preparation of a joint exhibition in 2024.

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence will present an exhibition of works of art from the collection of the State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Karakalpakstan named after I.V. Savitsky in 2024. Director of the Uffizi Gallery Eike Schmidt and Executive Director of the Foundation for the Development of Culture and Art under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan Gayane Umerova signed a Memorandum on 10 January 2023, establishing bilateral cooperation in preparation for the future exhibition.

The delegation of the Uffizi Gallery during their visit to Uzbekistan visited a number of state museums and other institutions in Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Nukus, including the State Museum of Art named after I.V. Savitsky.

“We are very pleased to cooperate with such a respected cultural institution as the Uffizi Gallery, and look forward to the official announcement of the exhibition, which in 2023 will present the masterpieces of the collection of the Igor Savitsky Museum of Art, the largest in Central Asia, to the public. The planned project is the next step that meets the main mission of our Foundation to spread the culture of Uzbekistan on a global scale, as well as increasing interest in our heritage and in our country among the international audience,” Gayane Umerova, Executive Director of Art and Culture Development Foundation, said.

Located in Florence, the famous collection of the Uffizi Gallery is rich in unique pieces from different periods of the Renaissance. Every year the gallery welcomes more than a million visitors, being one of the main attractions of the city and the entire region of Tuscany.

Collection of the State Museum of Arts named after I.V. Savitsky, founded in 1966 in Nukus, has about 100 thousand items of storage and is considered one of the best in Central Asia and ranks second in the world in terms of the number of Russian avant-garde collections, which also includes a large-scale collection of the Turkestan avant-garde and exhibits of arts and crafts of Karakalpakstan and unique archaeological exhibits.

The partnership of the most important cultural institutions of the two countries within the framework of the upcoming exhibition became possible thanks to the efforts and support of the Foundation for the Development of Culture and Art, one of the missions of which is aimed at disseminating the cultural heritage of Uzbekistan abroad and familiarizing the international audience with the rich history and culture of the region.