Pushkin Museum. The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts is the largest museum of European art in Moscow, located in Volkhonka street, just opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The International musical festival Sviatoslav Richter's December nights has been held in the Pushkin museum since 1981. The museum's current name is somewhat misleading, in that it has no direct associations with the famous Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, other than as a posthumous commemoration of his name and fame. The facility was founded by professor Ivan Tsvetaev. Tsvetaev persuaded the millionaire and philanthropist Yuriy Nechaev-Maltsov and the fashionable architect Roman Klein of the urgent need to give Moscow a fine arts museum. After going through a number of name-changes, particularly in the transition to the Soviet-era and the return of the Russian capital to Moscow, the museum was finally renamed to honour the memory of Pushkin in 1937, the 100th anniversary of his death. The building of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts was designed by Roman Klein and Vladimir Shukhov. Construction lasted from 1898 until early 1912, with Ivan Rerberg heading structural engineering effort on the museum site for the first 12 years. In 2008, President Dmitri A. Medvedev announced plans for a $177 million restoration. A 22 billion rubles expansion, developed by Norman Foster in collaboration with local architectural firm Mosproject-5, was confirmed in 2009, but became mired in disputes with officials and preservationists and concern grew that it would not be completed on schedule for 2018. After Moscow's chief architect Sergei Kuznetsov issued an ultimatum, demanding that Foster take a more active role in the project and prove his commitment by coming to the Russian capital within a month, Norman Foster's firm resigned from the project in 2013. In 2014, Russian architect Yuri Grigoryan, and his firm Project Meganom, were chosen to take over the project. Grigoryan's design provides new modern buildings and, following the protest of heritage groups who campaigned to save the pre-revolutionary architecture, preserves the historic 1930s gas station near the Pushkin's main building inside a glass structure. The holdings of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts currently include around 700,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, applied works, photographs, and archaeological and animalistic objects. The Department of Manuscripts houses documents on the Museum's history; the scientific and epistolary heritage of its founder Ivan Tsvetaev, other museum workers, famous art historians, and artists; and archives from other museums that are also included in the Pushkin Museum holdings. The Museum owns studios for research and restoration works and a Scientific Library. The earliest monuments from the Museum collection are pieces of Byzantine art: mosaics and icons. The early stage of development of Western European painting is represented by a relatively small, but very impressive, collection of Italian Primitives. The hall of early Italian art was opened on October 10, 1924, but the first original paintings were presented to the Alexander III Fine Arts Museum in 1910 by Mikhail Schekin, the Russian consul in Trieste, and include unique Old Master works such as painting by Giambattista Pittoni. After 1924, many paintings from Moscow and St. Petersburg state-owned and private collections were provided to the Museum. These were artworks by Western European painters from the Rumyantsev Museum, as well as the private collections of Sergei Tretyakov, the Yusupovs, the Shuvalovs, Henri Brocard, Dmitry Schukin, and other Russian collectors. Pieces provided by the State Hermitage were of particular importance. However, the gallery was completed only in 1948, when artworks by French painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were transferred from the State Museum of New Western Art. The Department of Prints and Drawings was founded in 1924, when the Museum received the holdings of the Printing Cabinet of the Moscow Public and Rumyantsev Museum. In 1861, Alexander II made a valuable gift to the Printing Cabinet: the Moscow Public and Rumyantsev Museum received more than 20,000 prints from the Hermitage. Later, the Department received a number of private collections from Dmitry Rovinsky, Nikolay Mosolov, and Sergey Kitaev. During the Soviet period, the Department's holdings were increased by means of gifts, acquisitions, and transfers from other museums. Today, the Department of Prints and Drawings is a solid collection of graphic art pieces that includes around 400,000 prints, drawings, books with prints, posters, pieces of applied graphics, and bookplates.