Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMoMA) ~ Magnificent Gallery Spaces Displaying The Best In Modern & Contemporary Art

Written by Yuri Tsereteli Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:32

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMoMA) was inaugurated on December 15, 1999. It is situated at Petrovka, 25, near the Petrovsky Boulevard in central Moscow. The Museum's main building is the former Gubin’s mansion, an imposing monument of the late 18th century neoclassical movement, designed by the noted Russian architect Matvei Kazakov. Apart from that, the Museum owns two splendid exhibition venues: a vast five-storey building in Ermolaevsky lane, and a spacious gallery in Tverskoy boulevard, both fully refurbished for hosting large-scale projects. The founder and general director of the Museum is a well-known Russian-Georgian artist Zurab Tsereteli, president of the Russian Academy of Arts. Moscow Museum of Modern Art is the first state museum in Russia that concentrates its activities exclusively on the art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Since its inauguration, the Museum has expanded its strategies and achieved a high level of public acknowledgement. Today the Museum is an energetic institution that plays an important part on the Moscow art scene. MMoMA was created with the generous support of the Moscow City Government, Moscow City Department of Culture and Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow. Its founding director was Zurab Tsereteli, President of the Russian Academy of Arts. His private collection of more than 2.000 works by important 20th century masters was the core of the Museum’s permanent display. Later on, the Museum’s keepings were enriched considerably, and now this is one of the largest and most impressive collections of modern and contemporary Russian art, which continues to grow through acquisitions and donations. The Museum’s extensive exhibition strategy aims at showing the artistic process of the 20th and 21stcenturies at its maximum span and diversity. In all three buildings of the Museum, one can visit single-artist shows, group exhibitions and conceptual displays by well-known masters as well as by emerging artists or the ones that need to be rediscovered. Apart from expanding the permanent collection and organizing multiple temporary exhibitions, the Museum engages in various other activities, including research and conservation work, book publishing, and others. The Museum publishes «DI» (Dialog Iskusstv / Dialogue of Arts) magazine, heir to the authoritative «Dekorativnoe Iskusstvo» (Decorative Art). One of the Museum’s priorities is to promote young and emerging artists, bringing them into contemporary artistic process. With this purpose the Museum launched a special education program — the «Independent Workshops» School of Contemporary Art. The two-year schedule includes practical activities in creative workshops, as well as lectures on contemporary art, studies of the art market and the new technologies in visual arts, and a broad spectrum of issues on today’s culture. Visit The Moscow Museum of Modern Art at : http://www.mmoma.ru/en/

The Museum’s permanent collection represents main stages in formation and development of the avant-garde. The majority of exhibits are by Russian artists, but the display also includes some works by renowned Western masters. For example, graphic pieces by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró and Giorgio De Chirico are on view, along with sculptures by Salvador Dalí, Armand and Arnaldo Pomodoro, paintings by Henri Rousseau and Françoise Gillot, and istallations by Yukinori Yanaga. Within the Museum’s holdings, a special emphasis is put on the assembly of Russian avant-garde. Many works have been acquired in European and American galleries and auction houses, and thus returned from abroad to form an integral part of Russian cultural legacy. The highlights include paintings and objects by Kazimir Malevich, Marc Chagall, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Pavel Filonov and Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Tatlin and David Burliuk, as well as sculptures by Alexander Archipenko and Ossip Zadkine. Besides that, the Museum owns a unique collection of works by the famous Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani. An extensive section of the permanent display is devoted to Non-Conformist art of the 1960s-1980s. The creative activity of these masters, now well-known in Russia and abroad, was then in opposition to the official Soviet ideology. Among them are Ilya Kabakov, Anatoly Zverev, Vladimir Yakovlev, Vladimir Nemukhin, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Oscar Rabin, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Leonid Schwartzman, Oleg Tselkov, and more.The Museum readily supports the newest artistic developments and fills up its collection with works by our contemporaries. Now this part of the display presents pieces by Boris Orlov, Dmitry A. Prigov, Valery Koshlyakov, Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov, Oleg Kulik, Viktor Pivovarov, Andrey Bartenev, and many others. Apart from expanding the permanent collection and organizing multiple temporary exhibitions, the Museum engages in various other activities, including research and conservation work, book publishing, and others. One of the Museum’s priorities is to promote young and emerging artists, bringing them into contemporary artistic process. With this purpose the Museum launched a special education program – the “Free Studios” School of Contemporary Art. The two-year schedule includes practical activities in creative workshops, as well as lectures on contemporary art, studies of the art market and the new technologies in visual arts, and a broad spectrum of issues on today’s culture. Moscow Museum of Modern Art is always open to new initiatives and ready for collaboration.

The Museum’s extensive exhibition strategy aims at showing the artistic process of the 20th and 21st centuries at its maximum span and diversity. In all three buildings of the Museum, one can visit single-artist shows, group exhibitions and conceptual displays by well-known masters as well as by emerging artists or the ones that need to be rediscovered. Among the exhibitions currently showing at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art is "THEM", the third key exhibition of Viktor Pivovarov in Moscow. The first one, "Steps of a Mechanic", took place in 2004 at the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum; the second one, "Lemon Eaters", was hosted by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Ermolaevsky Lane building) in 2006. The new exhibition is presented at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, in the Gogolevsky Boulevard building. As were the previous ones, this project is prepared in partnership with XL Gallery. Viktor Pivovarov (b. 1937), just like Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov, Ilya Kabakov, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, represents the older generation of the so-called ‘founding fathers’ of Moscow conceptualist school and, just like Eric Bulatov and Oleg Vassiliev, Pivovarov stands well beyond its limits. Being a truly radical romantic, Viktor Pivovarov has a special place among Moscow romantic conceptualists, as Boris Groys called them. The "THEY" referred to in the titles are themes, images, heroes, and ideas born in the artist’s mind; they are embodied in the creative process and continue their independent lives in the space of culture. The project displays works that the artist created during almost five years that have passed since his last Moscow show. The current exhibition comprises ten independent cycles, each having its own detached space: ‘Melancholics’, ‘Hermits’, ‘The Chosen Ones, or Time of the ROSE’, ‘The Glassy Ones’, ‘The Perfect Ones’, ‘Handsome Men’, ‘Milena and the Spirits’, ‘Philosophers, or Russian Nights’, ‘Immortals’. The 2010 album entitled ‘They Are Back!’ concludes the exhibition. A special place in the exhibition belongs to the series of portraits entitled ‘Philosophers, or Russian Nights’. The artist understands philosophy in its original meaning, as love of wisdom. That is why here, apart from portraits of the so-called ‘professional’ philosophers such as Alexander Pyatigorsky and Merab Mamardashvili, one can find images of poet Igor Kholin, visionary Daniil Andreev, poet and political activist Eduard Limonov, and writer Vladimir Sorokin. These are portraits of people who have created and still create the inimitable spiritual ambience of Russian and Moscow culture. Viktor Pivovarov’s radical romanticism lies, apart from other things, in his firm belief in the fact that, even in the new IT civilization, ideas and images of the old classic culture are omnipresent and they are still relevant to our formation. Dmitry Shorin: Festivals - The new project «Festivals» includes about 40 paintings, the presentation of the exhibition in Moscow Museum of Modern Art March 5 to Аpril 3, 2011. Also photography and installation by Rauf Mamedov on view.