KIEV, January 25. /TASS/. Kiev City Council has taken a decision that the Kiev Museum of Russian Art will be renamed as the Kiev Gallery of Arts, Elena Yeskina, the council’s former member, said, citing Wednesday’s session of the council’s culture commission.

"The commission has taken a decision that the Museum of Russian Art will be renamed as the Kiev Art Gallery," Yeskina wrote on her Facebook page.

The commission members also voted against mentioning the surname of the Tereshchenko family, manufacturers and patrons of art in the 19th century whose collection was donated to the museum, she said.

Moreover, the Kiev City Council had turned a deaf ear to opinions of Kiev residents and former lawmakers, who called for naming the museum as the ‘Kiev National Museum. Tereshchenko Gallery of Arts’ at public hearings.

Earlier, Russian Art Museum employees had opposed the museum’s rebranding and omitting the words ‘Russian art’ in its official name. The unique collection, the core of which are exhibits of Russian art culture, is national treasure, they said. Therefore, it would be incompetent to omit the phrase ‘Russian art’, the experts said, as Russian culture is featured in the exhibition.

The Kiev National Museum of Russian Art was founded in November 1922. The collection has over 13,000 exhibits. Among them are unique Russian icons dating back to 13th-17th centuries, paintings by Ilya Repin, Dmitry Levitzky, Ivan Aivazovsky, Ivan Shishkin, Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Vrubel and other Russian artists.