Garage’s 10th Anniversary

This summer marks the 10th anniversary of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. 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 and, over the past 10 years, has seen its audience grow from 10,000 visitors in its first year to over 700,000 visitors last year.

Though the museum has become a leader in the region, Garage’s origins were as humble as its name suggests. The museum was founded in 2008 in a remote part of the capital, in the Bakhmetievsky Bus Garage, which Konstantin Melnikov designed in 1926. Its initial objective was to introduce the Russian public to international art stars such as Marina Abramović, John Baldessari, and James Turrell, artists largely unknown to Russians thanks to the country’s historical rift with the West.

Today Garage is housed in a cutting edge Rem Koolhaas-designed building in Gorky Park, around the bones of the Soviet-era Vremena Goda (“Seasons of the Year”) cafe, the centerpiece of another exhibition at Garage this summer, Did You Have a Good Time? Vremena Goda Café since 1968 (June 8–September 2), which marks the building’s 50th anniversary. With Garage’s new home came bigger crowds and as attendance ballooned, the museum saw the scope of its mission grow proportionally.

Garage has embraced and expanded its role as a hub for research and education. Soviet censorship led to a dearth of knowledge about “unofficial” art, and through its work in initiatives like the Garage Archive Collection and Field Research, Garage has emerged as an authority on certain eras of art history in Russia. Newer programs like the Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art, which brings together artists of all ages from across the Russian Federation, and its recently announced Garage Studios residency program ensure that the Museum remains similarly relevant to the avant garde of the today.

Garage’s increasingly dynamic curation has found its exhibitions gaining ground with new audiences, including those in the West—Proof, a show that brought together the black-and-white works of Robert Longo, Francisco Goya, and Sergei Eisenstein, recently travelled to the Brooklyn Museum and the Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

Garage has also worked hard in the area of accessibility to the differently abled, a crucial area of study in Eastern Europe. The goals of the Garage Inclusion Program are represented this summer in a show that explores the connection between society’s understanding of deafness and aspects of Russian cultural history. In Infinite Ear (June 8–September 2) the public will be invited to hear, feel, and understand sound through vibration, body movement, sign language, images, and fiction.

Garage has a number of celebrations and free admission days planned for the week of the official anniversary on June 10, though some of the festivities, like the temporarily redesigned logo by Urs Fischer seen above, have already begun. The anniversary coincides with the 2018 World Cup in Moscow, the subject of a show by Juergen Teller (June 8–August 19) that documents, via photos and video, the artist’s own obsession with the sport. The show also includes a nail-biting performance element: the museum will screen broadcasts of Teller watching Germany play every game in the 2018 World Cup.

Garage’s other shows for the summer offer a nod to its past and its future. Dear Visitors… (June 8–August 26) uses the latest in museological technology to offer compelling narratives and sociological studies about Garages millions of visitors. A three-part interdisciplinary project in the Garage Lab (June 8–August 26) will examine the future of museums and of culture as a whole through a variety of mediums, including an ambitious installation by Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda.

In short, Garage’s 10th birthday celebration follows in the lively and inventive spirit that have made these past ten years of shows such a success. One can only imagine what comes next.

For a full list of exhibitions, performances, publications, research initiatives, and public programs contact Cultural Counsel at garage [​at​] culturalcounsel.com.