According to Bloomberg.com -- The Russian government will spend more than 4 billion rubles ($170 million) to expand and modernize the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the museum's director said.

The Pushkin Museum is Moscow's leading collection of Western European art, and owns about 650,000 items. It attracts about 1 million visitors a year, and has one of the finest collections of French Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings, with major works by Matisse, Monet, Picasso, and Van Gogh.

The museum has the backing of the Foundation for Support of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, a private organization headed by Dmitry Medvedev until he became President of Russia in May.

``President Medvedev has been deeply involved in getting this support, for which we are very grateful,'' Irina Antonova, the museum's director, said in an interview. The money, given over three years, ``will help us expand and reconstruct the museum as part of plans to mark our centenary in 2012.''

In November, the museum approved plans by U.K. architect Norman Foster to add 110,000 square meters (1.2 million square feet) to the museum's current 40,000 square meters. The Pushkin aims to mark its centenary in 2012 with four new buildings on adjacent land within sight of the Kremlin, and the renovation of several decrepit czarist-era structures.

Antonova, who has served as Pushkin director since 1961, said that the presidential grant will be officially approved in the second half of June or early July. The total cost of the museum's expansion will be ``at least'' $400 million, and the project will require a second phase lasting from 2012 to 2015 that will need additional financing, she said.

The new space planned by Foster will be used for more exhibition space, conservation laboratories, state-of-the-art storage, a library and rooms for classical music concerts.

Medvedev, then president elect, said in comments published by government's official newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on May 6 that money was to be given to the Pushkin ``to allow us to implement all our beautiful plans during a set timeframe.''

(John Varoli writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)