“Every year, fewer and fewer veterans of the War remain on this earth, and often take their stories with them,” you hear on the video. “Time is of the essence. World War II veterans are in their twilight years. Some of the people I’ve photographed have already passed away.” The voice belongs to Sasha Maslov, […]
“There is no sex in the Soviet Union!” So declared one Soviet woman in 1986, responding to an American woman who had asked about comparative sexual openness in the States and USSR during a segment on a TV show hosted by Russian-American journalist Vladimir Pozner. Though misquoted – the woman actually responded, “There is no […]
The paradox of studying abroad is that so much is at your fingertips, yet there’s never enough time to see it all. But what if you could see all of Russia in one day? Now you can with a visit to The Grand Maket Rossiya (The Grand Layout of Russia), a museum based around a […]
New Holland / Новая Голландия Embankment of the Admiralteskiy Canal, 2 Metro Admiralteskaya Open daily from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. After returning from his travels abroad to Holland and a stint studying shipbuilding there, Peter the Great decided to establish a little bit of Holland in his own country. Conceived as a military port […]
Stirka 26 Kazanskaya Ulitsa / Sennaya Ploshad metro Coffee stop. Art space. Performance venue. Hipster haunt. Laundromat to the stars (and commoners alike). Stirka somehow manages to be all these things. Stirka, full name “Café-Laundromat ‘Stirka’ 40 Degrees,” began as a project by Anke Nowottne, who created the spot as her graduation project from the […]
Once a year, in over forty countries spanning Europe, nearly three thousand museums remain open late into the night for “Night of Museums.” Since 1977, International Museum Day has been recognized worldwide on or about May 18th. As a way to celebrate this holiday, Night of Museums was established in 1997 in Berlin. A little […]
There’s a lot to be said about the highly political, oftentimes tenuous relationship between artists and art galleries throughout the Modern age. It can be argued that this ambivalent relationship has its origins at the founding of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris in 1648. For centuries, an artist’s reputation was vaulted […]
When you find yourself in front of the Marina Gisich Gallery on Reki Fontaki, it’s difficult at first to tell if you’ve found yourself at one of St. Petersburg’s most significant contemporary art centers, or at a building undergoing major electrical work. The space is currently hosting Marina Aleexeva’s “Lifeboxes,” which features shadowboxes of painstakingly fabricated […]
St. Petersburg has always been Russia’s “window to the West.” At the time of its construction in the eighteenth century, Peter the Great envisioned a city encompassing the greatest architectural achievements of Western Europe: the romantic island-canal systems of Venice and Amsterdam, luxurious baroque architecture, and a court rivaling that of the French in power […]
