Semey's art museum holds a collection of more than 3,600 works — paintings, graphics, sculpture — assembled by the Nevzorov family and now administered as a public institution. The collection is weighted toward Russian art of the 19th and 20th centuries, though it includes works from across the Soviet world and beyond. The associated library holds around 11,000 volumes.
For a city of Semey's size and relative isolation, the quality of the collection is genuinely surprising. It functions as a reminder that this corner of Kazakhstan has been connected to broader cultural currents — through exile, through the Tsarist garrison town, through Soviet institutions — for a long time. If you are spending a day or two in the city, an hour here is well spent.