The National Portrait Gallery will be housed...

"This is actually an affiliate of the State Historical Museum; it is the former Lenin Museum. It is considerably large, with an exhibition space up to 1,000 square meters. This should be enough to start the gallery," Avdeyev said.

The Lenin Museum was shut down after Russia"s incipient economy was subjected to heavy cuts in public services and the arts in 1993, and had been largely neglected until it staged the First Moscow Biennale in 2005.

"I think people now hold a strong sense of interest in our country"s past, and a portrait can by all means give an outline of our great historical figures," added Avdeyev.

The gallery will host a collection of portraits of eminent Russian scholars, artists, civil servants and military figures. Putin, who ordered the construction, said it was the "members of the first wave of Russian emigration" who originally came up with the idea.

MOSCOW, January 26 (RIA Novosti)