Art lovers used to commute 17 hours from Tashkent just to see its beloved museum. But the town is becoming a worthy destination in its own right.
I arrived in Nukus by jump from a move geartrain .
My trip from the formerSilk Roadtrading townsfolk of Bukhara in southernUzbekistanto there was hypothecate to be the deification of my two - hebdomad journey through the land . But I ’d spent the previous night mouth fastidiously via Google Translate with an avuncular Russian professor and two soldier in my compartment . Some time after midnight , I jammed my earplug into my ears and laid down , assume I ’d be woken up by the conductor when we neared our finish .
Instead , my neighbor violently throw off me alive . “ Nukus ! Nukus ! ” he grumble urgently , half - benumbed himself , stab his fingerbreadth at the window . I looked blearily out at the whitish - pinkish sky . The train was n’t move .
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But , by the time I managed to sling my packsack over my shoulders , it was . The conductor was idly smoke a cigarette out the windowpane as I gestured wildly at the station — the one I could see slip by . “ I have to get off here ! ” I wailed , now learning that Nukus was not , in fact , the wagon train ’s end point . The conductor frantically hit the latch and swung start the door .
Uzbekistan is known for its Silk Road towns : the dust-covered , clay - bake fortresses and sky - blueing tiled minarets of Bukhara and Khiva . I ’d fare to see those sights , of course , but what really drew me to the country was an improbable museum in the desert , one that ’s been call “ the Louvre of the Steppe ” for its astonishingly robust collection of Uzbek and Russian artwork . Over the line of the past two years , paintings from its aggregation had been exhibited in Florence , Venice , and Paris , waking up the encompassing art earth to the treasures salt away in an retiring edifice in an unnoted country , hour and hours away from its upper-case letter .
Wanting to see how the museum ’s growing cultural influence abroad was changing its home base metropolis , I stood on the bound of the train , which was pick up amphetamine , and jump off .
Photo courtesy of Catherine Bennett
The story of the State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Karakalpakstan in Nukus has been differentiate so many times it ’s now legend . But I ’ll give the quick synopsis anyway :
Igor Savitsky , an electrician - turned - archeologist who was birth in Kyiv , bring down the sovereign commonwealth of Karakalpakstan in 1950 as a painter engage to document archaeological mission in the region . While there , he became fascinated by the Karakalpak culture — distinct then and even now from Uzbek culture — as well as its local artwork and craftsmanship . To save the region ’s folk art , which was dying out due to modernization , he make up one’s mind to found a museum consecrate to keep up it , which opened in 1966 .
Savitsky also traveled around the Soviet Union to secretly buy paintings from the widow of creative person who had been sent to prison for their dissident , avant - garde art . ( His collecting fervor put him in massive debt , which the museum cover to give off after his death in 1984 . ) He smuggled these work back to his museum in Karakalpakstan , where they were exhibit in bare slew . He was n’t excessively worried about being punished by the authorities .
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After all , no one really come to Karakalpakstan .
“ Everyone considers Nukus a pickle - in - the - paries , a seat in the middle of nowhere . However , it is not so , because , for one , only in Nukus was it possible to create such an improbable museum , the one impossible to build elsewhere , ” Savitsky compose .
But thing are changing these days .
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“ I remember people would often come up to Uzbekistan and miss out on Nukus entirely , ” said Askar Zhumagulov , a travel advisor at Nukus - based tour agency Ayimtour , who grew up in the city . “ But fortunately , that ’s changing . ” In 2018 , the Uzbek regime abolish visas for tourist from nine land , include Israel , Japan , South Korea and France ; the next yr , it grant all EU citizens visa - complimentary change of location . The relaxing of rules led to a tourism surge : In Karakalpakstan alone , there was a 120 % growth in the number of foreign visitors between 2022 and 2024 .
This newfound oecumenical influence was tangible . For the first time on my trip , I was n’t see the same cheap Silk Road merchandise everywhere . Gone were the palpate cardigans and scarf joint with pomegranate approach pattern glue on , supposedly manus - painted ceramic featuring very designs whether they come from a market in Samarkand or in Khiva , and the ubiquitous camel - shaped fridge magnets . Instead of visiting dozens of madrassas and eating Uzbekistan ’s national dish of beef and Sir Tim Rice plov , I was able to frequent eating place serving pizza pie and Gallic - style patisseries while people - watching for university student feature fashionable camel wintertime coats that would n’t look out of place in Milan . restaurant were garlanded with the same phony charge card flowers draped over the awnings of London bars and Parisian bistro . Although it ’s surround by three different deserts and is 700 naut mi by cable car from the upper-case letter , it felt like a aliveness , rapidly modernize urban center — not one that was artificially stuck in the past , catering to tourists ’ anticipation .
In Nukus , you feel unaired to the sky .
The city only became the regional working capital in 1932 , and as a outcome is laid out in a modern gridiron - like structure . ( If you depend at it on a mapping , you ’ll see that it ’s stretched out into a long , slimly ellipse Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe like the school-age child in a cat ’s oculus . ) Nukus sits flatly in the heart of a plain , and does n’t have the towers or heroic hotels of Tashkent and Samarkand , making it feel more open and airy than the country ’s Silk Road towns with their medieval townsfolk planning . Its metropolis center is made up of long boulevards delineate with trees , and vast empty square toes in which youthful couple walk hand - in - hand . In the neighborhood where I was staying , squat houses were devise into neat plot with front garden , where children were playing on plastic thrust - along bikes — a sort of grittier , Uzbek Wisteria Lane .
The Savitsky museum , as it ’s known , is slap - bang in the middle of town , near government offices and two giant range pole flying the Karakalpak and Uzbek flags . It ’s the ace attractive force of a urban center on the raise , drawing traveler off the Silk Road tourist trail and out into the desert . “ Nukus is very far from all of the tourist places in Uzbekistan , but the museum has changed the city ’s paradigm , ” Tigran Konstantinovich Mkrtychev , the museum ’s director , told me . “ It is the pridefulness of the city . You would never see a collection like this anywhere else in Uzbekistan . ”
The museum has been on tourists ’ radars for a while . But it has become more pop in the last couple of years , thanks to the private , government - affiliate Uzbekistan Art and Culture Foundation spearheading ethnic outreach . Uzbekistan inaugurated its first ever country marquee at the Venice Biennale in 2021 , and its flagship exhibition ‘ Uzbekistan : The Avant - garde in the Desert ’ was curated by Italian client curator from Venice ’s Ca ’ Foscari university , in quislingism with the Palazzo Pitti in Florence . Uzbekistan has also loan authoritative historical artifacts and artwork to museums in London , Paris , and Berlin over the last two years , include for a major show about the Silk Road that ’s on now at the British Museum .
Basically , Uzbekistan ’s government is on a soft tycoon crusade , trying to attract tourer through artistry and culture — and Nukus is reap the benefits because of its museum .
Karakalpakstan isone of the poorest regionsin Uzbekistan . A black Soviet water diversion project in the sixties dry out up the Aral Sea , release the area into desert and decimating the local economic system , which relied predominantly on its fisheries . The environmental damage drove up unemployment and health problems in the Karakalpak population . But locals say that a new focus on tourism could be a direction to wrick around the region ’s fortunes — and many businesses are eager to adapt to a Modern clientele .
“ Is it unusual to see foreigners in Nukus ? If you ’d asked me seven or eight years ago , then yes . But now , not at all , ” say Miyribek Koshkarov , a handler at Sofram , an upmarket eatery democratic with holidaymaker . “ We ’re endeavor to teach the waiters how to dish foreigner , how to describe the nutrient and take orders in English . Karakalpaks already know several terminology : Russian , Uzbek , Karakalpak , and Kazakh . What ’s one more ? ”
Tazabay Uteuliev is the founder of Besqala Tours , one of the longest - established and most democratic tour agencies and lodge in Nukus . He enjoin that the tourism business is completely unlike to what it was when he inscribe it in 2005 . “ I start with nothing — all I had was a tent and a wheel , ” he say . Now his tour company has a fleet of cars and driver , and they run a yurt camp in the desert near the Aral Sea . Business is thriving , with a divers clientele . “ Before the pandemic , we had mostly French tourer , ” he said . “ Then after the pandemic , we had a stack of Spanish masses . This twelvemonth , it ’s been Italians . ”
In 2022 , the governmentpromisedinfrastructure labor to boost tourism in the region , like extending high - stop number rail between Nukus and Tashkent , which would reduce the travel time from 17 to seven hours . Uteuliev says that the government has also offered touristry companies perks , such as pay less custom tax on foreign cars for head off - route desert tours , and have well-situated admission to credit to build hostels and guesthouses .
A few days after , I leave Nukus by car , drive through the scrub desert that unfurls for miles across the country ’s Khorezm region , where ancient settlements have been wind - blasted into nonobjective sculptural forms and Village accent a checkerboard of farming land . I return the Silk Road tourist lead in Khiva , a thick town encircled by mudbrick fortifications and straining to receive as many tourists as it can . Exploring sand - dark-skinned street twine like shoelaces around nineteenth - C palaces , or eating dill bonce overlooking the lit Kalta Minor minaret on a startlingly cold night , it was easy to finger transported back in time . But it was Nukus and its improbable museum that I keep on thinking about — a Ithiel Town not bond in the past tense , but hurtling into the time to come .
