The new space of the Grabar Restoration Center, opened in February 2018, is located in a historical and architectural monument, the former workshop of Vera Mukhina. The architectural project was created with the participation of Ivan Zholtovsky, a well-known neoclassical architect.

After Vera Mukhina's death in 1953, the workshop passed to the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov, and later to the State Scientific Research Institute of Restoration. In 2013, the building was transferred to the Grabar Center to create a new department, the “Iconotheca A. N. Ovchinnikov.”

Adolf Nikolaevich Ovchinnikov, an artist and restorer of ancient Russian painting, actively participated in expeditions in the 1960s and 1990s, studying and copying monumental painting. He meticulously reproduced frescoes from the 8th and 15th centuries from eight churches, including the Church of St. George in Staraya Ladoga and the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior on Ilyina Street in Veliky Novgorod, where Theophanes the Greek worked in 1378. Among them are churches in Georgia, St. George in Achi, and the monastic complex of cave churches in Saberebi. The exhibition features tracings and full-scale copies-reconstructions of frescoes made from materials close to the original. This is the first fresco museum in Russia where one can study unique monuments without leaving Moscow.

The “Iconotheca” offers an extensive educational program: tours, master classes on restoration and copying, lectures on art history, and scientific conferences. Special attention is given to working with contemporary icon painters and teaching the copying of frescoes using the methodology developed by A. N. Ovchinnikov.