It’s always refreshing to take a peek into the glamorous (and well-funded) arts scene in Moscow.
And without a doubt, investment in the arts hasn’t slowed in the slightest; in fact, the opening of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art was a vibrant reminder of that. In the Rem Koolhaas-designed building in Gorky Park, Founders Roman Abramovich and Dasha Zhukova and Chief Curator Kate Fowle hosted over 500 international guests. In the incredible guest list, the invites reached every corner of the media-producing world, from filmmakers Woody Allen and George Lucas, fashion phenoms Miuccia Prada and Delfina Delettrez Fendi, media queen Arianna Huffington, model Karlie Kloss, patrons of the arts Dimitris & Mikaela Daskalopoulos, Maja Hoffmann, Adam D. Weinberg, Francois Pinault, Lord Jacob Rothschild, and Wendi Deng Murdoch as well as artists such as Emilia Kabakov and Jeff Koons. Rounding out the guest list were Larry Gagosian (of the namesake NYC gallery) and David Zwirner.
The opening exhibition program includes interactive exhibitions by Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929, Matsumoto, Japan) (also showing in the David Zwirner gallery in NYC) and Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. 1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) with Julius Koller (b. 1939, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia); a new series of displays from Garage Archive Collection, photographs of the Moscow underground art scene from the 1970s through 1980s by Moscow Conceptualist George Kiesewalter (b. 1955, Moscow, USSR); Field Research: a progress report, which features four ongoing projects from curators Koyo Kouoh (b. 1967, Cameroon) and Rasha Salti (b. 1969, Beirut, Lebanon); the Technical Assistant of the Museum of American Art in Berlin. It’s a delightfully liberal show, more or less the Garage Museum flexing its curatorial muscle with it’s ability to draw the world’s premier artists to commission new work as well as display its solid collection. The June 10th Grand Opening was generously supported by Gucci.
