Moscow’s Cultural Institutions Being Revived After COVID

Moscow’s cultural life is slowly reopening after months of closure due to COVID-19. Theatres and concert halls are being revived, although with extensive restrictions on seating and other saftey measures taken. Below is a Russian news report with transcription in side-by-side translation. Некоторые театры уже открылись. В других идут последние приготовления к встрече с публикой. […]

Supermetal: The Latest in Moscow’s Urban Redevelopment

By the end of 2020, the founders of Khlebozavod9 and The Brusov Ship will open a new public space near Baumanskaya metro station in Moscow. A former industrial zone will host the Supermetal Cultural and Business Complex. The team’s plans call for two architectural monuments, laboratories with panoramic windows, three courtyards, and some small manufacturing […]

Repin Masterpiece Still Under Restoration 1.5 Years After Attack

“Ivan the Terrible Kills His Son,” one of Russian master Ilya Repin’s best-known paintings, was damaged by a vandal a year and a half ago. The man was motivated by his belief that the painting shows an event that never happened and is essentially “fake news” blackening the image of Ivan the Terrible. He used […]

Exhibition of Peter the Great’s Art, Science, and Chinese Ties Opens in Moscow

A new exhibition at the Moscow Kremlin Museum, and the below television report about its opening, attempt to at once humanize and expand the mythology around Peter the Great. Opening with descriptions of well-known history and including descriptions of items that would be expected at a exhibition devoted to royalty, the exhibition and report also […]

New Tretaykov Exhibition Focuses on Work of Director Andrei Tarkovsky

A recent exhibition by the New Tretyakov Gallery combined works by artists who were not shown or who were banned during the Soviet era with images from Andrei Tarkovsky’s films and sets. Tarkovsky’s films, such as Solaris and Stalker, have an international cult following and were known for breaking the bounds of what could usually […]

Stopping to Smell the Roses in Moscow and St. Petersburg

By far one of my favorite pastimes is taking pictures of flowers. I love capturing their temporal beauty, as well as appreciating their many varieties in species, size, and color. Below are just four of the many places flowers thrive in Saint Petersburg and Moscow.   VDNKh (Moscow) I first noticed the beauty of the […]

Sampling the Performance Arts in Moscow

Moscow is a globally recognized center for the performing arts. The city hosts multiple venues for opera, ballet, music, and drama—so many, in fact, that choosing from them can be difficult. Also, many students from small towns may not have been to these types of cultural institutions before – many tend to exist primarily in […]

Russia Reunites Two Major Art Collections, May Found New Museum

Russia has reunited the great pre-revolutionary art collections of Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin. The collections of both Tsarist-era businessmen were nationalized after the revolution, partially auctioned abroad and then split between museums in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Each exhibition has been reported as an inspirational event, as the righting of a historical wrong, and […]

Russia’s ‘Ticket Mafia’ and Other Challenges to Managing Russian Cultural Institutions

The “ticket mafia” has long been a problem in Russia. Scalpers buy tickets, often at deep discounts by employing the pensioners who qualify for them, and then sell the tickets at wildly inflated costs. This is not, however, the most interesting inefficiency in managing Russia’s cultural institutions. For instance, the story below details the Bolshoi’s […]

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