M O S C O W Interview with Leonid Shishkin - Passport magazine

Previews
From Raphael to Goya
Two museums are collaborating to
bring you some fantastic art in June.
The Museum of Fine Arts from Budapest
is displaying paintings at the Moscow
Museum of Fine Arts. The two museums
themselves are almost twins: look at the
eclectic-neoclassical style of their design,
their dates of construction—both
in the first decade of the 20 th century—
and their cultural interaction for years.
Irina Aleksandrovna Antonova, the director
of the Moscow Museum of Fine
Arts, manages to arrange new exhibitions
in a way that enable one to learn
more about the visual arts not only from
Russian artefacts but also from those
of museum’s counterparts. Thus, coming
up in June, we have the chance to
Ottoman Sultans’
Treasures
The Topkapi Palace is a fantastic example
of a rambling ensemble of buildings
making up an Ottoman palace. Those
who have visited Istanbul will know that
it is also home to numerous exhibits and
relics such as the prophet Muhammed’s
cloak and sword. This palace was the major
residence of the Sultans from the 15th
to the 19th centuries and maintains under
one roof the best examples of what
Turkish artisans, sculptors created during
those four hundred years.
It may be rather difficult to define a specifically
‘Ottoman’ culture, so large and
diverse was the Ottoman empire, yet in
such centres as the Topkapi Palace, one
can certainly speak about the national
peculiarities of that culture.
June 2010
view, right here in Moscow, sixty classical
paintings from the Esterhazy collection
of the Budapest Museum, including
masterpieces by Raphael, Giorgione, Titian,
Veronese, Tintoretto, Dürer, Hals,
Velázquez, José de Ribera, El Greco,
Goya and others.
The Spanish painters are a special object
of pride at the Budapest Museum.
Its collection is comparable to that of
the Prado in Madrid. The title of the exhibition,
From Raphael to Goya, promises
to provoke new queues around the
building in Volkhonka Street after the
successful Picasso show.
From June 8
Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts
Open: 10:00-19:00
When the Trees
Were Tall
At the Lumiere Brothers’ Centre for
Photography they have adopted a safe
strategy for displaying reportage photographs:
by decades, as part of an anthology
of the 20 th century. Some people
have asked: “What exactly does the
curator do in such a show?” But the very
first show, The 60s, which was held two
years ago at the Central House of Artists,
turned out to be very competent,
even when compared to the simultaneous
PhotoBiennale, for example.
Choosing pictures for a show to be arranged
by decades does produce curious
results. Those buildings, fashion, ways of
This is the first time that treasures
from the Palace are being displayed in
Moscow. More than a hundred exhibits
illustrate the every-day life of the Ottoman
Sultans. There are gorgeous weapons
including parade helmets, swords,
some of which belonged to Suleiman
the Magnificent. He was the longestreigning
Sultan of the Ottoman Empire,
ruling from 1520 till his death in 1566.
Here you can find costumes, jewelry and
certainly manuscripts of the Koran created
in the 16 th and 17 th centuries, miniatures
never shown in Russia before.
May 25-August 15
Moscow Kremlin, Cross Chamber of the
Patriarchal Palace
Open: 10:00-17:00, open every day
except Thursdays
www.kreml.ru
life captured in the photographs evoke
scents, tastes and music from deep down
in our memories, and this is all in a time
when today’s ten year olds think that sms
and emails are the only way to write messages,
and that photographs are printed
only from flash cards. This summer, the
Lumiere Brothers Gallery is presenting
new exhibitions in a larger space at the
Red October Gallery, with pictures by
best Soviet reporters: Dubinsky, Abaza,
Gnevashev, all of whom worked for the
Soviet news agencies: Rian, Itar Tass.
May 28 – August 1
Lumiere Brothers Gallery
3, Bolotnaya embankment, building 1
Open: 11:00-20:00, every day except Monday