Festive greetings from Garage

Dear Friends,

The holidays are almost upon us, so I would like to sum up the past year and take a look forward to the next. Thank you for being with us in 2019. Garage continues to attract more visitors year-on-year. In 2019, we were visited by around one million people. I’d like to list every project we completed this year, each member of the team, and every artist, gallerist, partner, patron, and donor to Garage Endowment Fund; in fact, everyone who helped us to explore the latest in contemporary art, examine complex subjects, and discuss the world to come. However, I’ll focus on a few examples which I think give hope for the future.

The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100 was the second most popular exhibition in the Museum’s history, attracting over 380,000 visitors. It coincided with an upsurge in interest in the environmental agenda, and I hope that as well introducing visitors to a diverse selection of artists and artworks it also inspired them to think about the impact humans have on the natural world and what we might do to avert an ecological disaster.

This year, Garage expanded its inclusive programs to incorporate work with people with experience of migration. The first part of the new program focuses on audience development with migrants, including adapting the Museum’s exhibition and education programs and developing special guided tours, workshops, and courses. The second part aims to bring together people with and without experience of migration, in order to create an environment of mutual understanding and trust. We’ll keep you updated as the program develops.

In 2019, we managed to lose (and then find!) Garage, the Museum cat. We’re very grateful to everyone for keeping the story alive through social media, which eventually led to Garage coming home after a month-long adventure.

We have a lot of surprises in store in 2020. In future newsletters we’ll tell you all about the development of Garage Campus in Moscow, and also in St. Petersburg! We’ll invite you to exhibition previews, including the 2nd Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art, which opens at the end of June. And we’ll share with you the new program for Garage Studios and Artist Residencies, where Russian and international artists and curators create together in Moscow.

See you next year at Garage!

Yours,
Anton

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GARAGE DIGITAL

GARAGE DIGITAL

Garage Digital brings together artists, scientists, programmers, and art historians, and aims to explore and support advanced technologies and their intersection with visual culture, new media, and artistic and research practices. Along with digital art, the program focuses on the latest technological advancements: code, neural networks, big data analysis, game engines and computer graphics, 3D printing, and other new production modes.

GARAGE DIGITAL GRANT PROGRAM

Applications are now being accepted for the Garage Digital grant program, intended for artists working with digital technologies. Applicants must be Russian citizens. There are five grants available, comprising an award of 60,000 rubles and up to 250,000 rubles toward project costs. Winning projects will be published on the Garage Digital online platform.

The application deadline is February 3, 2020.

SEKRETIKI: DIGGING UP SOVIET UNDERGROUND CULTURE, 1966–1985

From December 12

The exhibition Sekretiki: Digging Up Soviet Underground Culture, 1966–1985 presents Soviet underground art as a form of secret knowledge shared by a circle of friends and collaborators and requiring protection from the outside forces of ideological control and censorship. During the Soviet period, such secret activities were not limited to art but also included spiritual practices, from yoga to esotericism and alternative medicine. The exhibition, which is inspired by Garage Archive Collection, explores the human passion for mystery and ritualized “secrets.”

ART EXPERIMENT. YOU’RE ON AIR

January 2–12

You’re on Air, the Museum’s 10th Art Experiment, explores the poetic, magical, and mnemonic properties of scents. The exhibition invites visitors to enter the mystical space of the ether through connecting scents to the solar system’s celestial bodies with Scottish artist Katie Paterson; visiting the secret workshop of perfumer and chemist Anna Agurina; creating a personal olfactory portrait in the hi-tech installation by artist group Where Dogs Run; experiencing abstract yet familiar scents with Norwegian artist Sissel Tolaas; and producing healing bouquets with American artist Jess Hirsch.