This unique art colony was a hive of activity in the late 19th Century where the talent of many famous artists - Surikov, Serov, Vrubel and Korovin to name but a few - was cultivated. The colony's ballet productions were the beginning of the great Russian tradition of theatre design, and the colony's workshops that produced handicrafts of traditional Russian design were the beginning of a revival of interest in traditional peasant design. The museum today has a exhibition dedicated to the lives and work of those that lived in the colony and their guests, who included the famous writers S Aksakov, N Gogol and I Turgenev.