The Imperial Academy of Arts was opened in 1757. The Academy building was constructed by the order of Catherine the Great and faces the Winter Palace. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 the academy passed through a series of transformations. It was successively renamed Russian Academy of Arts in 1933, the Academy of Arts of the USSR in 1947, and back the Russian Academy of Arts in 1991. The current Russian Academy of Arts is headquartered in Moscow (since 1947). Now the historical building on the Neva river accommodates the Ilya Repin Saint Petersburg Academic Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, but it is still informally known as the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts.
