Architecture · Moscow · Observations · Heritage

Specialists correct the tilt of the pedestals of late Empire style gates

Restorers in the Neskuchny Garden Rescue the Ceremonial Gates of the Alexandrinsky Palace - "Seasons" With time, the pedestals for the statues had leaned badly towards one another and looked alarming. The gates, created in the Late Empire style, are an architectural masterpiece of the mid-nineteenth century, and

Art · Moscow · Museums · Society Pages · Humour

Cosmoscow Anecdotes

Maxim Boxer asks: how much is this Shelkovsky? The reply: the work is not for sale, it is a museum exhibit, you are at the stand of the Multimedia Art Museum. A pity

Art · Moscow · Observations · Society Pages

Moscow lily by Anna Tagantseva-Kobzeva for 300 euros at the Fabula Moscow-874 stand

And here is my first purchase. A heraldic Moscow lily; a pity it is not a swallowtail. The work of Anna Tagantseva-Kobzeva, who mixes mystical motifs, science, actuarial-network theory and object-oriented ontology. The price of 300 euros is close to archaic cults, and seems to answer the

Art · Moscow · Society Pages · Humour

Presentation of the Ninth Cosmoscow Season at the Manege

Presentation of the ninth Cosmoscow season at the Manege. An empty chair beneath the portrait of Olga Sviblova serves as a reminder of the joke about Olga Lvovna's famous punctuality. ps The best stand at the fair was judged to be that of the Szena Gallery

Black-and-white group photograph of seven men in a studio, with a round emblem showing a playing-card jack and the words “Jack of Diamonds” on the left.

Archive · In the Press · Art · Moscow

Review of the first painting exhibition “Jack of Diamonds” at the Levisson house on Bolshaya Dmitrovka, 1910

"This shameless card... recalls an asylum for the insane rather than an exhibition of works of art" From a review of the first Exhibition of Painting, "The Jack of Diamonds", which opened in the Levisson house on Bolshaya Dmitrovka on 10 December 1910

Chests, knightly shields, bags and poles beside a red basement entrance of a brick building.

NB! · Architecture · Books · Moscow · Humour

Knight Ivanhoe caught up in Moscow's renovation programme in 2021

Sir Ivanhoe falls victim to renovation. Moscow, 2021

Books · Moscow · Museums · Observations · Society Pages

The Library of Foreign Literature opens a research hall with books of Vyacheslav Ivanov

What is the indispensable element of any scientific institution? Why, a hallmark of quality, an emblem that would shine like a star on the lapel of that institution's jacket. Today, in one of Moscow's jackets (the Library of Foreign Literature), a very important pocket was unstitched,

NB! · Cinema · Moscow · Observations · Humour

Stills from Marlen Khutsiev's 1965 film "I Am Twenty"

Stills from Marlen Khutsiev's 1965 film "I Am Twenty". So the young people embraced a little, rolled about on one another beside a football pitch, danced chastely, and nothing came of it: not a single Komsomol card fell off. Who knows what another 20 years will

Books · Moscow · Observations · Humour

It is alarming that Dasha Veledeyeva of Harper's Bazaar repeats the mistake of Lyudmila Sviridova from the bread factory, who was let into the general reading room (Hall No. 3, though the largest in Europe) and told that it was the academic hall (Hall No.

Girls, the academic hall is straight down the corridor, not to the right!!!

The East · Art · Moscow · Museums

Vyacheslav Akhunov’s installation “Mantras of the USSR”, developed by the artist since 1975

When Miziano and Krasteva, the curators of the exhibition "Service of Time" at Garage, wrote about the relation between spiritual labour and time, and about the different forms time may take in art, what did they have in mind, and how is it expressed in t. Step, say,

Architecture · Art · Moscow · Observations

Dobryninskaya Metro Station (formerly Serpukhovskaya) Is Adorned with 16 Refined Bas-Reliefs by Yelena Yanson-Manizer, Wife of the Author of the Bronze Sculptures at Ploshchad Revolyutsii

The marble reliefs depict, for the most part, agricultural workers. This is presumably meant to allude to the chief farming trade of each Soviet republic. Why 16 republics? There were 15 Union republics, the RSFSR included, from 1956 onwards; in 1950, however, when the station opened, there was still the

Moscow · Observations · Society · Paris

Metro accessibility for people with limited mobility in Paris, Tokyo and Moscow

The French on Opportunities for Normal Life for Disabled People in Paris: A Paralympian Carrying the Olympic Flame Cannot Get Down into the Metro. A reminder: in Paris only 9 stations out of 300 are fully equipped for wheelchair users. In Tokyo, by comparison, it is 186 out of 211.