Garage Contemporary Art Museum.Moscow. Russia Day 32 – March 18th 2017
We had promised ourselves slow travel yet here we are irresistibly running across Russia fitting in everything we possible can. Today on our last full day in Moscow we again found ourselves fitting in all we could.
This included The Garage Contemporary Art Museum, Gorky Park, the Museum of Arcade Machines and a late but wonderful lunch with Olga and Ruslyn, founders of ExplorRussia and their gorgeous baby.
Today also involved our final trip home on the Metro solo. We loved the fact that you use a ticket to get in to the Metro then no more till you enter again. Found it hard to work our a) Cyrillic station names b) where you were as it was not always clear as you pulled into the station c) which way the train was going. But with a range of techniques we made it – mostly counting stations required to get us from Point A to Point B.
The first stop on our day was a short Metro trip to the Garage a contemporary art museum . “Founded in 2008 by Dasha Zhukova and Roman Abramovich, Garage is the first philanthropic institution in Russia to create a comprehensive public mandate for contemporary art.” This was an unmissable stop, our flagging brains and legs were revived, the work was stimulating and fascinating and the space amazing. Did not want to leave.
It was a great time to be visiting as there was a Triennale of Russian Contemporary Art – ” Triennale of Russian contemporary art – the largest project-study in a long-term program of the Museum “Garage”, aimed at the development and popularization of contemporary art in Russia. Triennale as a regular exhibition project will take place at the “Garage” every three years. The exhibition in 2017 will feature more than 60 artists who were selected by the curators of the Museum in the course of travel and research for more than 40 Russian cities.”
What a feast. And how fantastic to have a museum guide to explore the exhibits with. Art was collected and grouped around main themes. The activism gallery of work was confronting – works about violence against women, about sweat-shop labour, about protest.
Words here don’t really do it. The Triennial was absorbing, emotional, confronting, fun, thoughtful, thought-provoking, memory provoking and of course different works appealed differently to each of us.
Reluctant though we were to leave Gorky Park and the Soviet Arcade Games Museum beckoned.
After our fantastic wander through the contemporary art of Russia we stepped out into Gorky Park – a famous part of a lengthy park network along the Moscow River. The nearby park is unusually named (probably because of literal translation) “unboring garden”.
In 1931 a young woman was appointed Director of Gorky Park and inititated a range of changes and ideas. My wish-I-had-been-there was to see the ballet Swan Lake performed on an island in the centre of a lake. Then again in 2011 a young woman Olga Zakharova was appointed Director to rejuvenate the park again. While not looking its summery best today the park was filled with people on bikes, skates, walking.
After Gorky Park we briefly visited buildings of other buildings that comprise the seven sisters and considered prime Soviet Archictecture along with other buildings seen and visited.
From Gorky Park we wended our way above (walking) and below (Metro) to the Museum of Arcade Games – not exactly the place I was looking forward to – except that is did sound weirdly wonderful. Once there the museum guide brought the history alive.
Things I remember – the games were made in Military factories and in smaller numbers than the USA – hence said to be better constructed. The games were developed to assist skill development and included a game housed in most police stations that tested road knowledge.
The machine both of us were the most fascinated with was the soda machine Kruschev had developed after seeing them in the USA. What was exceptional was that the machine had one side for soda and one side for cleaning. A tall glass was kept on the machine and after use washed by the person who had the soda. Apparently they were never stolen and if borrowed were brought back promptly.
A few games and a short walk later and we said a sad goodbye to Polina and met Olga and Ruslyn for lunch in a delicious vegetarian café.
