The Prison Art Museum is likely the only private museum in Russia dedicated to this theme. It began its operations in June 2004 and is very popular among tourists.

The museum features amazing exhibits created by inmate artisans. These items were confiscated in colonies during searches and collected from various correctional institutions. The exhibits are made from improvised materials or prohibited items that were illegally smuggled into prisons. Here you can see figures made of bread, various wooden souvenirs, lock picks, homemade weapons, and much more. The exhibition also includes genuine letters from inmates to their loved ones.

Among the exhibits is a unique musical instrument, a homemade guitar. Its body is made of papier-mâché, the top from a board, the strings from cord thread, and screws are used instead of tuning pegs. Although you can play the guitar, it produces more of a cry than a melody. Next to it are sculptures made from black bread with added salt and ash.

Inmates paint with oil on bedsheets, depicting familiar landscapes or biblical scenes. The icons are characterized by detailed rendering and numerous small details, which take several months to create. One of the displayed images is framed with a copper cover inlaid with broken glass. The museum also features the Sistine Madonna, burned with a heated nail on plywood, as well as a miniature temple with an iconostasis carved from wood using homemade chisels and knives.

The museum also exhibits cold and firearms made by inmates. Aluminum spoons, plastic lighters, pipes, and rusty sleeves are used to create shanks and sawed-off guns.

One of the museum's rooms is dedicated to an unusual exhibit. Through a peephole, you can see a prison cell with figures in striped robes made of wax. For an additional fee, you can try on a robe and take a photo on a bunk.

Visiting the museum includes viewing exhibits in two halls with a detailed narrative from a guide in the form of a guard, who sometimes speaks in prison slang. In the museum shop, you can purchase rare literature about the lives of inmates, encyclopedias of prison tattoos, and dictionaries of prison slang. The museum organizers hope that the exhibition will make visitors, especially the young, reflect on the value of life in freedom and the difference between creativity in the open and in prison.