Architecture · Moscow · Museums · Observations · Heritage

The Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val Ceases to Organise Exhibitions

Following a recent expert appraisal, the condition of the building has been judged unsatisfactory. The museum's director, Yelena Pronicheva, expressed the hope of beginning work on a renovation project for the New Tretyakov Gallery next year. What on earth? It's a perfectly good building, Soviet quality

NB! · Observations

Or at Least Magic Realism

Art · Moscow · Museums

The Magnificent Léon Bakst from the Russian Museum Collection at the GES-2 Exhibition

One of the key works of the Silver Age artist Léon Bakst, a meditation on the fate of the classical heritage amid the social and political catastrophes of the early twentieth century. Painted after the Russo-Japanese War and the revolution of 1905-1907, the picture gave expression to the

Observations · Mores · Paris · People

I had never before met such an original definition

Coco Chanel was dubbed a "horizontal collaborator" from the Ritz, a hint at her long liaison with Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, a German lawyer and NSDAP official who was also, in his spare time, a secret agent and special representative attached to the Reich Ministry of Propaganda.

A smiling man in glasses leans out behind a serious girl in a pink T-shirt against a red background, both raising their palms.

Archive · Cinema · Pop Culture

Photograph of Natalie aged 13 and Jean aged 46, born in 1948

Natalie Portman and Jean Reno on the set of Léon in 1994. Natalie is 13 here, Jean is 46; it turns out he was born in 1948

Art · Books · Observations · Humour

I wrote that I was impressed to hear Wagner performed by Currentzis's orchestra; a music critic replied: a mediocre performance of a mediocre arrangement

I recommended Smirnov von Rauch's book "The Board of Dionysius" to my book club, and my fellow members say: a dreadful book, Alexandr, why did you choose it? I find no answers; such, it seems, is my taste 😭 The photograph shows a portrait of Pushkin by

Nine square paintings of large faces in orange, blue, yellow, black and other colours hang on a tall white wall above an entrance. A security guard and stanchions are visible below.

NB!

Nine colourful painted faces on the wall of a museum lobby

Art · Museums · Paris

Marlene Dumas becomes the first living woman artist whose works have been acquired for the Louvre's collection

Marlene Dumas has become the first contemporary woman artist whose works have been acquired for the collection of the Louvre. The polyptych, which is to hang at the entrance to the new "Pavilion of the Five Continents", is reported to have cost the museum 470,000 euros. The

Listings · Moscow · Coming Up · Art · Museums

A new selection of Moscow's main exhibition events

📌 16 December: opening of the exhibition "Beautiful Monsters", devoted to exotic animals in the work of European artists, at the Pushkin Museum, until 1 March 📌 18 December: opening of the exhibition "Legacy of an Era. Mikhail Savitsky" at the Tretyakov Gallery on Kadashevskaya Embankment, until 1

NB! · Aristocracy · Architecture · Moscow · Mores

A Salon at the Arkhangelskoye Estate in the 1890s

Art · Books · Observations

Nikolay Aseyev's poem on money, power, fame and the community of people

People still cling to money, as people clung to crosses in the days of the remote Kerzhenets, but it will not last for ever. People still reach for power, not knowing its measure or its price, but this will not endure for long: other times will come. People still chase

Archive · Books

There is no friend as loyal as a book

Ernest Hemingway. In the photograph, from the 1900s: the historian Mikhail Pokrovsky

Alexandr Radayev