At the beginning of the 21st century dynamics of regional and local sociocult u ral processes amplified which is ref lected in works of artists, in museum exhibition projects, and also in publishing activities. Historical and cultural researches are developing simultaneously on the all-Russian and regional levels. The observation is made of the process of reorientation of researchers’ attention towards cultural and anthropological history. It corresponds to modern international practice of humanitarian research. The article is devoted to ethnocultural traditions in the works of the Altai painter and black and white artist, I.I. Frizen, who was the founder of the Russian Germans Miseum in the Grishkobka village of in the German national region of the Altai Krai, the author of the album of graphics illustrating the life of the Russian Germans “National Memory” (2015). The social history of art is designed to launch the mechanisms of broadcasting of images and values of the past to the present; the analysis is given to personalized (biographic) approach to study history as a science and to study art creativity.