Moscow’s skyline is largely defined by the seven towering skyscrapers nicknamed “The Seven Sisters.” Also known locally as “Stalinskie Vysotki” (Сталинские высотки – Stalin’s Highrises), they are one of the leading architectural legacies of the Stalinist period. The Soviet Baroque architecture that The Sisters embody is seen by some as unattractive; the buildings themselves are […]
Moscow’s cultural life is slowly reopening after months of closure due to COVID-19. Theaters and concert halls are being revived, although with extensive restrictions on seating and other saftey measures taken. Below is the transcript in side-by-side translation from a Russian news report that recently aired on Russia Channel. Некоторые театры уже открылись. В других […]
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 […]
“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 […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
In Anna Melikian’s 2015 film Pro Lyubov (About Love), a film divided into vignettes focusing on modern love ala Love Actually, one of the vignettes focuses on a young woman from Japan who comes to Russia due to her love of Russian literature. While in Russia she hopes to find a Russian boyfriend. She goes […]
