Continuing my live report from the Association of Galleries meeting at Cosmoscow

Gorlova, head of the Department of Newest Trends at the State Tretyakov Gallery, complains of a lack of funding for exhibition activity. “For the most part, it is sponsors' money,” she says. “Funding for contemporary art exhibitions, as we know, is harder still to obtain. Besides, there have been no acquisitions for the Newest Trends department in the last ten years. That is precisely why the galleries themselves so often become the sponsors.”

Tsereteli supports her colleague: “The Moscow Museum of Modern Art once had funding for exhibition activity, but now it has none. A ‘museum + gallery’ partnership may, of course, prove the solution to this problem. As for acquisitions: it happens that everything is ready, a plan has been drawn up, the valuation carried out, and then, say, a pandemic arrives and everything grinds to a halt. Funding is cut and refused.”