Lydia Nikolaevna Goncharova (1922 – 2011) is a candidate of art history. The theme of her dissertation is "Russian decorative-applied art bronze of 1860 – 1880". Since 1947 she had worked as a curator of the Western European arms collection of the State Historical Museum.


During her work in the Weapon Department, she participated in historical and domestic museum expeditions, compiled catalogs of the collection of Zlatoust and St. Petersburg weapons, wrote articles for the weapon classification guide and a number of scientific papers. In 1962 she was transferred to the position of the curator of the sculpture collection.

In 1964 she joined the Russian Academy of Fine Arts as a senior research fellow at the Department of History, Theory, and Contemporary Art Problems. From 1970 she worked as a scientific secretary of the Museum of Folk Art, and then headed the Laboratory of Metal, Stone and Bone. She was engaged in research and collecting activities, worked with artists and craftsmen.

The manuscript materials of the collection contain a large heritage of scientific articles, reports, lectures by Lydia Nikolaevna, as well as expeditionary materials (expeditions to Nizhny Tagil, Armenia, Moldavia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Karelia, Ulyanovsk and Arkhangelsk regions and Russian North). The collection contains a collection of projects and sketches by leading artists of Art Industry Research Institute and other pictorial materials.