The Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMoMA) is the first state museum of modern art in Russia, whose collections exclusively contain works of visual culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. The museum was founded in 1999 with the support of the Moscow Government and the Department of Culture of the capital. The founder and director of MMoMA is Zurab Tsereteli.
The permanent collection includes more than 12 thousand art objects: paintings, photographs, sculptures, and installations. The museum also organizes temporary exhibitions and conducts scientific, restoration and publishing activities. The museum has five sites in the center of Moscow. The main building is located in Moscow at St. Petrovka, 25.
The museum collection is based on Tsereteli’s collection, numbering more than 2000 works by masters of the 20th century. Later, the funds were replenished. Now, the museum has one of the most significant collections of Russian art of the XX century.
The MMoMA collection, consisting of works by masters of various artistic movements of contemporary art, has about 12,000 exhibits. The chronological framework of the exposition covers the period from the turn of the 20th century, the time of the emergence of modernist artistic practices in Russian culture, to the present day. The museum’s collections feature works by avant-garde artists. The museum funds contain individual works of representatives of the artistic movements of the 1920s, socialist realism, and Soviet impressionism. A large section of the exposition is also devoted to the work of the 1960s-1980s nonconformists.
Avant-garde
The collection is based on the works of the classics of the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century. Many works have been bought at auctions and galleries in Europe and the USA. Among them are paintings by Kazimir Malevich, Marc Chagall, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Alexandra Exter, Aristarkh Lentulov, Vladimir Tatlin, Pavel Filonov and Wassily Kandinsky, sculptures by Alexander Archipenko and Osip Zadkine. In addition, the museum houses a unique collection of works by the Georgian primitive artist Niko Pirosmani.
Nonconformists
The museum presents the works of nonconformist artists of the 1960s-1980s, who at one time were “underground” and now widely known in Russia and abroad: Ilya Kabakov, Anatoly Zverev, Vladimir Yakovlev, Vladimir Nemukhin, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Leonid Shvartsman, Sergey Alferov, Koryun Nagapetyan.
Contemporary artists
The museum supports the development of contemporary art in Russia and constantly replenishes its collection. Currently, the contemporary art section presents works by Evgenia Vasilyeva (EVA), Boris Orlov, Dmitry Prigov, Francisco Infante, Oleg Kulik, Alexander Brodsky, Aidan Salakhova, Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov, Viktor Pivovarov, Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Andrey Bartenev, Sergei Chesnokov-Ladyzhensky, Igor Novikov, Yuri Shabelnikov, Alexander Oligerov and other artists.
Sites
Main site: Petrovka, 25. The building, designed in 1793 by architect Matvey Kazakov, houses a permanent exhibition of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. In the XVIII century, the building served as the main house of the city estate of the industrialist and merchant Mikhail Gubin. In 1880, the house housed a gymnasium, where the Symbolist poet Valery Bryusov and the Bakhrushin brothers studied. In 1920, the former gymnasium was appointed as the Institute of Physiotherapy and Orthopedics, which belonged to the entire Soviet period, and in 1995 it was transferred to the museum designation. Ceiling paintings made in the classic style have been preserved here, as well as unique interior elements – the main staircase, an orchestra niche in the ballroom, and ceramic stoves. In addition to the exhibition halls, the museum building now houses a cafe and a bookstore kiosk.
Other sites: Ermolaevsky lane, 17, Tverskoy Boulevard, 9, Gogolevsky boulevard, 10, Bolshaya Gruzinskaya, 15.
Museum departments are open from Tuesday to Sunday: from 12:00 to 21:00. Day off is Monday.
TICKET PRICE
Department on Petrovka or on Gogolevsky Boulevard: 350 rubles – full ticket, 150 rubles – preferential; Museum of V. Sidur or department on Tverskaya: 150 rubles – full ticket, 50 rubles – preferential; Department on Ermolaevsky Lane – free of charge.
Nearest metro: Tverskaya, Chekhovskaya, Pushkinskaya, Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Trubnaya.
