Russian non-profit museum
opens as government earmarks Constructivist buildings for demolition
by SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY
As government officials in
Moscow earmark Constructivist buildings for demolition in a massive project to
relocate up to 1.6 million of the city’s residents, a non-profit museum
dedicated to preserving Russia’s avant-garde architecture has opened in the Shabolovka
neighbourhood.
The Shukhov radio tower,
seen here in a 1929 photograph, is the area's best-known structure (Photo:
World Monuments Fund)
Supported by private grants
and volunteers rather than public funding, the Avant-Garde Museum occupies a
room in Na Shabolovke Gallery. The gallery, part of a municipal network known
for its innovative exhibitions, is located in the Khavsko-Shabolovsky housing
complex built in the late 1920s by the rationalist Asnova (Association of New
Architects). It is part of a district with a rich heritage of early Soviet
architecture and design, dominated by the famous hyperboloid Shukhov radio
tower.
The museum features
photographs, archaeological fragments, archival materials, blueprints, salvaged
interior fittings such as door handles, and tools belonging to the tower’s
visionary engineer, Vladimir Shukhov. Oral histories gathered from longtime
Shabolovka residents are presented on video screens.
The idea for the space came
from the local historian and activist Ilya Malcow, who has spent years
collecting artefacts of the area—many of which are now on show at the museum.
The neighbourhood is unique, he says, because it was built virtually from
scratch after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to house workers for the new
factories and institutions.
Alexandra Selivanova, the
project’s curator, describes Shabolovka as an open-air museum that is
appreciated more by foreign tourists than most Russians. “In Moscow, there are
many spread-out monuments of the avant-garde,” she says. “Here you can come to
one relatively small area [to] see both the architectural and social
experiments of that era.”
The minimalist aesthetic
and utopian vision of Constructivist and rationalist architecture are unpopular
with today’s bureaucrats. “Ideas connected with freeing women from housework…
totally contradict our current programmes relayed by the authorities,” Selivanova
says. “The traditional, patriarchal family in no way corresponds to the
communal house… where everyone is absolutely equal.”
http://theartnewspaper.com/news/museums/new-space-celebrates-moscow-s-neglected-soviet/
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