Finally, summer cafes, libraries and museums are expected to reopen in Moscow. Starting from June 16, exhibition halls and museums are gradually opening all over Moscow. In almost every museum, visitors will only be able to buy electronic tickets, and everyone, including guests and exhibition staffers, are required to wear masks and practice social distancing.
The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
The Garage Museum in Gorky Park is already open to visitors. The pandemic, however, has forced them to make adjustments to how they work. From June 16 exhibitions can only be visited with electronic tickets with a fixed entry time.
But every Friday from 17:00 to 20:30 the Garage can be visited free of charge. You can view the schedule of exhibitions and choose your preferred date and time of visit on the Museum’s website.
At present you can see four shows that opened in late 2019 and early 2020 as well as a new sculptural installation by Yerbossyn Meldibekov called “Transformer.”
The Shusev State Museum of Architecture
The main architectural museum of Moscow is preparing to open June 23. The museum has more than 800,000 items in their collection, from hand-drawn architectural plans from the 18th through 20th centuries to models from the personal archives of architects. Several exhibitions will be open for viewing, including one on the future of public architecture in Europe, an amazing model of the Kremlin Palace done by the architect Vasily Bazhanov in the 1770s (that was never built), and the visit to “Byzantium” by architectural historian Nikolai Brunov in 1924.
Everyone will have to wear masks and gloves and keep a social distance of 1.5-2 meters from each other. Museum staffers will also do no-contact temperature checks of all the visitors before they will be admitted.
In the meantime, you can plunge into the architectural world of the past virtually. All details about virtual and real tours can be found on the museum’s website.
Museum of Russian Impressionism
This private museum dedicated to the Russian art of the late 19th–early 20th centuries is preparing to open on July 1. While the preparatory work is underway, everyone who wants to see the current show of works by Yuri Annenkov can attend online lectures by prominent Moscow art critics.
The cultural and educational base of the Museum is unique. Immediately after the lifting of the quarantine, the museum, together with the British Higher School of Design and the Moscow School of Modern Art, will hold an intensive lecture series on “Organization of a successful exhibition project from A to Z.” This is a great opportunity to study the exhibition business model from the inside. Details can be found on the museum’s website.
The State Tretyakov Gallery
One of the oldest museums in Moscow will open its doors for visitors on July 3. In addition to exhibitions in the historical building on Lavrushinsky Pereulok, you can also visit the New Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val, which displays the museum’s amazing collection of avant-garde art. The new exhibition project called “Generation 21. Gift of Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantin Sorokin” will open its doors there.
Viktor Vasnetsov’s house-museum and Apollinari Vasnetsov’s apartment-museum will also open their doors for visitors to enjoy their permanent exhibitions.
AZ Museum
One of the youngest private museums in Moscow will be open to the public on July 9.
The first guests after the quarantine will be able to see a new exhibition called “Kostaki’s Choice” to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the museum. It will showcase works from the collection of George Kostaki, who created a unique collection of the first Russian avant-garde and nonconformist artists,” according to the museum’s website.
You can buy tickets for this exhibition starting from June 22 on the museum site.
Other museums that opened last week include the VDNH museums, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Moscow, Tsaritsyno, the Bakhrushin Theater Museum and the Museum of Military History.
The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the State Historical Museum, the Moscow Planetarium, the Cosmonautics Museum, the Darwin Museum, and the Moscow Kremlin Museums will keep their doors closed until July, and some museums have decided to postpone the opening for visitors to a later date.
