Once celebrated as the city of 1,000 churches,
these days Moscow is a city of museums. On
the evening of May 20, over 200 museums,
galleries, and art schools will open their
doors to the public for the 11th annual citywide
“Museum Night” festival.
From 6 p.m. on, the festival offers a range
of special events in museum and art spaces:
interactive lectures, concerts, master classes,
historical reenactments and walking tours.
Most venues will be open until midnight.
The Russian Department of Culture sponsors
the festival, a large-scale attempt to connect
with youthful Muscovites and broaden
the audience of active museum-goers.
“One of the goals of cultural politics is to
form taste, to form habits and modes of consumption
of cultural content,” says Vladimir
Filippov, deputy head of the Moscow Department
of Culture.
The nocturnal art fest, which today is
among the largest cultural events in the
country, is one of a growing number of
similar “museum nights” around the world.
Moscow’s Museum Night attracts a young
audiences, says Filippov, with the median age
at about 33 to 35.
“We are winning the battle with the sofa
for Muscovites’ free time,” he says. “Sponsoring
this event develops the city’s creative
economy.”
Pioneered in the capital 11 years ago,
Museum Night is now a Russia-wide event,
taking place in cities and rural estate-museums
from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka. The organizers hope to attract audiences of all
ages and educational backgrounds with an
ambitious and varied program.
On Saturday, leading scholars and representatives
of Moscow’s major museums will
give lectures at the Hermitage Garden on a
variety of topics, from audiovisual art to the
physiology of memory. Meanwhile, the Winzavod
art space will host a series of theatrical
sketches and performances in its courtyard
on the theme of dreams. Its gallery spaces
will also be open to the public.
For children and young people, however,
Museum Night opens up potentially magical
experiences.
Families with young children might enjoy
a historical reenactment of the court of Tsar
Alexei Mikhailovich (1629-1676) at the main
palace in Kolomenskoye Park. The museum
staff will play out a court scene in 17th-century
costumes from 9:00-9:30 p.m. Children
can also participate in master classes at the
All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied
and Folk Art.
Moscow’s youth makes up an important
part of this target market: To reach this
group, the Department of Culture has hired
minor celebrities—including cosmonauts,
actors and other television personalities—to
present their take on the museum’s collections.
Some of these tours will be videorecorded
and available online.
For those who don’t speak Russian, Museum
Night will also offer musical concerts
for a wide range of tastes.
At the M.C. Shepkina House-Museum,
composer Misha Mishenko will perform live
piano accompaniments to short films by the
fashion designer Lesya Paramonova. For lovers
of mid-century modern jazz, meanwhile,
the Solo-Ts Jazz ensemble will play a concert
in the style of Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan
at the Tolstoy House Museum on Ulitsa
Pyatnitskaya.
Meanwhile, the Moscow Museum of
Contemporary Art on Gogolevsky Bulvar will
present sets of live electronic music (dance
music, ambient and noise) all evening.
To facilitate transportation around the
city, the Tele2 telecommunications company
has paid for a shuttle service between eight
museums, including the Museum of Cosmonautics
at VDNKh, the Jewish Museum of
Tolerance, the Bulgakov Museum, the State
Tretyakov Gallery’s two branches and the
Darwin Museum. Attendees can pick up a
burger and coffee at the shuttle stops before
they commute to the next museum.
“It’s great that in one day you can see the
best of the museums,” says Yelena Sakharova,
a press representative for the TV channel
Moya Planeta, who attended in 2016. “After
Museum Night, I feel full of strength, energy
and creativity.”
More information is available here