The Kharkiv Art Museum holds one of the largest collections of fine art in Ukraine, occupying a grand building near Sadova Street. The permanent collection spans Ukrainian and Russian art from the 18th century onward, with particular strengths in 19th-century landscapes and portraits and in Ukrainian avant-garde and Constructivist work from the early Soviet period.
The sections dedicated to Kharkiv artists from the 1920s are the most distinctive part of the collection — works by figures associated with the Ukrainian Modernist movement, many of whom were later persecuted or executed during the Stalinist purges. The museum also holds a good selection of Western European prints and drawings, and a collection of Scythian and Greek antiquities from the region. The building itself, with its ornate 19th-century facade, is worth a look from the outside even if time is short.