Happy thirteenth. Alina Saprykina: The Museum of the Future is about education and how to navigate in a big, complex world Alina Nikolaevna Saprykina year of birth
About popularity
Over the 120 years of its life, the Museum of Moscow has never been considered a landmark whose significance extends beyond the city. You said that you want to make it one of the most popular places in Moscow. Has this been successful in the 4 years that you have been heading it?
In 2015, we entered the top five most visited city museums: 900 thousand people a year. This is a large figure taken from the total number of visitors to the entire Museum of Moscow association. Also in 2015 (International Union of City Museums. - Note ed.) chose us as the venue for the 10th anniversary conference. We were chosen, among other things, because colleagues from all over the world paid attention to our museum, watching how we were developing. But, of course, we are aware that city museums are nowhere among the top three in terms of attendance. Always and everywhere, people first of all strive to get into art galleries and explore the city itself.
- What should a modern and popular city museum look like?
It should be more than just a place to display artifacts related to the city's history. Its task is to be a social museum and exhibition center, a meeting and communication place. It is necessary, on the one hand, to reflect the identity of the city, and on the other hand, the museum should be a kind of platform where artists, architects, urbanists, sociologists, people engaged in fashion research, gastroenthusiasts and musicians meet. We must react very quickly to what is happening in Moscow, catch topics that are interesting right now, and implement them into exhibition and lecture projects, and launch research. As for the historical and archival function, it is necessary to update the past, as if to translate it into modern language.
You provide your site for festivals of street musicians, you have been spending summers in the yard, organizing conferences and showing films. Do you feel like the exhibitions are getting lost amid all these activities?
An amazing fact, but we have not had a permanent exhibition since 1947. The last exhibition with objects from our collection was then held in the building of the Church of St. John the Evangelist under Elm on New Square, which housed the museum until 2011.
Chronicle of the Museum of Moscow
It was created in 1896 on the initiative of the Moscow Duma. Then it was called the Museum of Municipal Economy and was located in one of the Krestovsky water towers of the Mytishchi water supply system, built by the architect Geppener in 1893 (destroyed in the late 1930s during the reconstruction of the Yaroslavl highway). In 1920 it was renamed the Moscow Communal Museum
1 of 4In 1926, the institution moved to the Sukharev Tower, built at the end of the 17th century according to the design of Mikhail Choglokov. In 1935, the tower was destroyed - and the museum had to wander again
© Album “Old Moscow in Photographs”//pastvu.com
2 of 4The authorities allocate the Church of St. John the Evangelist under Elm on New Square to the museum. The exhibition introduces visitors to the reconstruction of Moscow adopted in 1935, and after the war, in honor of the 800th anniversary of the capital celebrated in 1947, a permanent exhibition opens. In 1986, the modern name appeared - the Museum of Moscow
© Vitaly Tsarin//pastvu.com
3 of 4In 2006, the Moscow government transferred to him the complex of buildings of the Provision Warehouses on Zubovsky Boulevard, built in 1829–1835 by Fyodor Shestakov according to the design of Vasily Stasov. Before this, a motor depot of trucks and special vehicles of the Ministry of Defense was based here.
© Anton Denisov/RIA Novosti
4 out of 4- How come you still don’t have your own exhibition?
- The museum changed its concept several times, the names and buildings changed. This is one of the features of the city museum: it, like a mirror, reflects what is happening around it, changing conceptually and ideologically. And as for the permanent exhibition, the answer is simple: the museum moved to the Provision Warehouse buildings in 2011. And no matter how good it looks from the outside, its internal volumes and communications remain in poor condition. It is simply inappropriate to engage in a permanent exhibition without completing the restoration of the buildings.
- And what will it be like?
This is everything connected with the history of the city and the life of its inhabitants. Painting, graphics, sculpture, cinema, photographic materials, documents, household items, clothing, cars, objects of the urban environment, doors, windows, grilles, hatches.
- Is this interesting to the young public - the audience who watches video blogs and smokes vapes? In my opinion, at all your exhibitions - especially nostalgic ones like “The Moscow Thaw” - the audience is over 30.
We have changed our approaches to stories about Moscow. And all these new ideas of ours for developing space - from film screenings in the yard to food festivals - are gradually increasing the traffic of young audiences. Let’s say that they initially came to see the video installation, but through the consumption of these museum-related forms they begin to become interested in and visit exhibition projects.
Igor Chapurin's show this year at the museum
3 out of 5Moschino show
© Photos courtesy of the Museum of Moscow
4 out of 5Every last Sunday of the month, a flea market is held in the courtyard, where most of the sellers are not sellers of popular print souvenirs, but grandparents, like from Platform Mark. They sell clothes, dishes, toys and books
© Photos courtesy of the Museum of Moscow
5 out of 5- How do historical and modern relate to you?
The city is more important to us than the form of expression. In this sense, I would like to mention the project of Vinogradov and Dubossarsky, who created an exhibition from objects stored in our funds. Or Faibisovich’s exhibition, where with his works he combined two views of one city: exploring everyday life and picturesque. Or an exhibition by photographer Vlad Efimov, who photographs Moscow as if through the eyes of a child.
The museum today is not a repository for internal scientific research. Collections must live through exhibition in a variety of urban spaces. For example, we cooperate with the metro - we hold joint exhibitions and organize. We did a project at Muzeon. And now we are negotiating a project on .
And if we expand the geography, let’s say what the exhibition of the Museum of Moscow in Berlin might be like? Now many museums around the world are carrying out projects for, and it is clear what Russian texture is interesting to the West: tsars, avant-garde, space, cinema, theater. What Moscow idea makes sense to show there now?
Moscow Days are held in various cities, where projects are selected on a competitive basis. For example, this year we are offering an exhibition of Soviet architecture. It seems to us that the same residents of Berlin will be interested in this.
For foreigners - modernism, for the older generation - nostalgia, for young people - food courts and film screenings. Can you present a project in your museum that will be of interest to migrants from the republics of the former USSR living in the city?
After the CAMOC conference, one of the topics of which was precisely the topic of migration, we hosted the Center for Emigrant Studies. Now on Mondays, when the museum is closed, we do joint programs for migrant children: we talk about the history of the city and its culture.
We already have the “Ethnic Moscow” project, where the best specialists, representatives of national diasporas, introduce citizens to the culture and heritage of the multinational capital.
In the near future we are planning to make an exhibition project about Moscow as a multicultural city. This is an important process; We are just beginning some kind of movement in this area, realizing that it is the city museum that should have such a social orientation.
© Photos courtesy of the Museum of Moscow
1 out of 10On April 5, the exhibition “Moscow. Fashion and Revolution": 200 collectible items - dresses, accessories, furniture, photographs and other artifacts from our own funds, as well as 100 items from the collection of Alexander Vasiliev
© Photos courtesy of the Museum of Moscow
2 out of 10Biennale of Young Art
© Photos courtesy of the Museum of Moscow
3 out of 10Exhibition of works by Rezo Gabriadze
© Photos courtesy of the Museum of Moscow
4 out of 10“Elusive reality” by the duo of artists Vinogradov and Dubossarsky.
© Photos courtesy of the Museum of Moscow
5 out of 10Semyon Faibisovich “My Moscow”
© Photos courtesy of the Museum of Moscow
6 out of 10“Flying Cities” - this exhibition showed utopian projects of 20th century architects
© Photos courtesy of the Museum of Moscow
7 out of 10Old wooden skis and other vintage exhibits - exhibition "Moscow and Sports"
© Photos courtesy of the Museum of Moscow
8 out of 10An exhibition of photographs with the touching title “Where does the Motherland begin?”
© Photos courtesy of the Museum of Moscow
9 out of 10“Soviet Childhood” - exhibitions with a touch of slight nostalgia are traditionally one of the most visited in the museum
© Photos courtesy of the Museum of Moscow
10 of 10Museum as a moderator of citizens and officials who disagree with each other
The launch of the MCC, reconstruction as part of “My Street”, architectural competitions - you participate in a huge number of urban processes. Does the museum have any real influence on them? Now, if, say, we take the results of the competition for the park in Zaryadye and what is there. How do you like it?
Our experts were involved during the work on the project: they asked us for historical materials. This is the first thing, and secondly, in 2014 we held an exhibition about Zaryadye with various solutions, and our visitors could vote for their favorite one.
It was proposed to vote for one of the following projects: a conserved archaeological site, a topiary park, a gallery of modern art, a multimedia center, and the fifth option - a typical village estate where a cultural center was to be located. And the last option won by a huge margin. We submitted the results of our sociological survey to the Moskomarkhitektura, but as a result, a cultural center in the form of an estate will not appear in Zaryadye Park, because, apparently, this went against the approved concepts.
- So you simply provided a platform for expression, but refrained from speaking out yourself?
The Museum of Moscow can act as an expert, but it seems to me that our role as a moderator is more important here. Different groups and urban communities cannot find common ground among themselves because there are no platforms that provide some kind of neutrality in relation to specific ideas. My vision of the city museum is precisely as such a moderator. We initiate various discussions, round tables, studies, conferences, surveys. This does not exclude the possibility that our employees can express their position in the media. But the museum itself is more of a work with different opinions and approaches.
The lack of public discussion is a big problem. Take the same situation in St. Petersburg. If there had been some clear presentation line, many issues could have been resolved. On the other hand, there are topics that should only be discussed and decided upon by professionals.
The same video where 120 years of the museum’s history fit into just over three minutes.
You said that you must react quickly to everything that happens in the city. It is clear that you are a state institution, but why has the Museum not taken any position in recent city protection disputes? You did not intervene in any way in the story with last year’s demolition and destroyed households in the same year.
If we talk specifically about this ATS, we were supposed to have public hearings on this issue - they were initiated by the Department of Cultural Heritage. There should have been, but it didn’t happen. I repeat: we always advocate transparent discussion. But it seems to me that the masses do not realize how complex city government is. These are huge processes. This is hellish, truly titanic work. It’s just that no one sees how difficult it is to open a new metro line or launch the MCC. Or build a park, and what does it mean to launch, thanks to which we now sign up for queues at all the necessary institutions in 5 minutes. And it is not at all customary to discuss the features, difficulties and real successes of many projects.
You say “state institution,” probably meaning a certain ideology in the creation of exhibition projects and events. So: there has never been a case where we were advised not to hold this or that exhibition. Or they asked us to do a specific project specifically. The Museum of Moscow is located in a healthy and developing urban environment, in a progressive and successful one, and not in some kind of curved space. It’s just that, again, perhaps due to mentality, many people tend to pay more attention to negative information.
- What will the Museum of Moscow, located today in a healthy environment, look like in 20 years?
We recently took part in the Moscow Cultural Forum. They showed the video “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow”, dedicated to the past and future of the museum. The end result of this work is this: in the future, artificial intelligence will become the mayor of Moscow, and our museum will become the main city museum.
Interview: Alisa Taiga
Photos: Alexander Karnyukhin
Makeup: Fariza Rodriguez
IN THE RUBRIC “BOOKSHELF” we ask journalists, writers, scientists, curators and other heroines about their literary preferences and publications that occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today, Alina Saprykina, director of the Museum of Moscow, shares her stories about her favorite books.
Alina Saprykina
Director of the Museum of Moscow
For me, a book must be tangible, have weight, history, and smell like paper.
Do the books you read influence your choice of profession? Yes, they are simply of enormous importance. Like the air, like the people nearby. Because you are made up of them. I have loved reading for as long as I can remember, since I was six years old. Of course, now my children are already reading at the age of four, but before, before school - a Soviet school with cheerful Octobrists and pioneers - they were in no particular hurry: everything has its time. We had a large library in our house: from philosophical and cultural books to textbooks on economics and cybernetics - these were my parents’ specialties. We also had a lot of art albums. I myself read everything - whatever I came across, whatever new appeared. In my childhood, books were generally more valued, and a person was judged by a library, so they were selected with special care. Among them were those that were obtained with difficulty or received in exchange for handed over waste paper. This is partly why I still can’t throw away books: my hand won’t rise. I don’t read electronically at all: for me, a book must be tangible, have weight, history, and smell like paper.
The first thing I read, when I barely learned to put words into sentences, was “Fairy Tales” by Hans Christian Andersen. Already as a child, I was a serious and responsible person, so I didn’t like fantasy and adventure. I read historical novels, the ZhZL series about Euripides, Chaadaev, Omar Khayyam, Mayakovsky. She loved classical literature. Then Rozanov, Berdyaev and Solovyov, then Kharms and his comrades. In my life there were old dacha files of the magazines “Foreign Literature” and “New World”. Then “Questions of Philosophy” and “Logos” - happy student times. There were funny magazines like “Ptyuch” and “Om”, when it suddenly became clear that visual formats were beginning to push aside texts - and now we are in a single media space.
An important book in adolescence was the novel “The Master and Margarita,” which I read with great sadness. A complex feeling, very suitable for the development of a young soul, that good and evil are two sides of the same thing, but you must always feel the truth, make a choice at every step. The two main writers of my life are Chekhov and Gogol. Gogol is a genius, but Chekhov is closer. If I were offered time travel to meet some writer, the choice would be clear. For me, the words that speak about life in Chekhov’s universe - tenderness, love, pain, transience, faith, dedication - are the basic concepts that define a person.
I find it interesting to search and review publications that now seem strange. Documents from hospice houses of the late 19th century, literature from agronomists from the early 20th century, Soviet industrial realism, and all kinds of urban planning statistics are a kind of antipodes to fiction. Nowadays, such texts and numbers are perceived as infographics, so it’s better to look at old materials, just like we look at old maps, for example.
I read either quite slowly, when the book is absorbed by the heart, or very quickly, when it needs to be grasped by the mind. I don’t buy books, but take them out from shelves that seem endless. Publications are always taken from somewhere, as if they multiply, and they are also given as gifts. Children also love to read, and they have their own library: fortunately, the tradition of reading continues in our family. I read in the morning over a cup of coffee, when the children have gone to kindergarten and school, and there is still a little time before the working day. When I travel, I always take at least one book, but I don’t always read it - sometimes it turns out that I just take it with me. Travel is the best replacement for a book, but a book is a replacement for your own experience with the experience of other people. When traveling you need to listen to yourself and your feelings, and in a book it is important to hear the voice of the author and his characters.
Travel is the best replacement for a book, but a book is a replacement for your own experience with the experience of other people
Alexandra Litvina
"The Story of an Old Apartment"
We bought the book for the children at the fair, but the whole family enjoyed reading and looking at it. It is about how the history of 20th century Russia was reflected in the history of ordinary inhabitants of an old Moscow apartment. Formally for children, it raises non-childish questions about denunciations and repression. Each page depicts the same apartment in an old house on a Moscow side street, in which the inhabitants, furnishings and topics of conversation on the sofa change from year to year.
The reader enters the apartment on an October evening in 1902 and remains here for a whole hundred years. Stories are told not only by the heroes themselves, but also by their things: furniture and clothing, dishes and books, games and household items - objects bear the imprint of time and keep traces of the era in which they were created and served. Then I bought another “The Story of an Old Apartment” and took it to work. At the Museum of Moscow, a year ago, my colleagues and I conceived the idea of an exhibition “Old Apartment”, which will open in November, and it was supposed to be similar to this book.
Dmitry Oparin, Anton Akimov
“Stories of Moscow houses told by their residents”
Dmitry Oparin, a former columnist for “Big City,” gave lectures at the educational center of the Museum of Moscow and was a guest guide at the excursion bureau at our museum. The bureau has always had the dream of making excursions to the studios of artists or simply to old-timers in Moscow. The first time we tried this format was in 2013, when we held the exhibition “Moscow Cloud Cutter” - about the Nirnzee house, which celebrated its centenary. The exhibition was then put together with the residents, those who were born there and lived their whole lives (there were very few of them). When a little later Dmitry had the idea of a book about the life of old houses and their inhabitants, we decided to publish it as part of the museum’s publishing program - and it became one of the bestsellers at the Non/fiction fair.
“Museum of the 90s. Territory of Freedom"
The “Museum of the 90s” project was launched in 2014 and first existed as an interactive museum on one Internet portal, and then as a series of monologues. The book became part of this dialogue about the era of Russian history. People still argue about the nineties - they are remembered with nostalgia or hatred. “Museum of the 90s” is a collection of voices, documents and artifacts from my formative years. There are memories of everything from the “Party of Beer Lovers” to shuttles and catches from trips abroad. It tells about the newspeak of the era, the program “About This” and films from video rental stores, the first earnings of the millionaire Chichvarkin and the emergence of the Luzhkov style in architecture.
Donna Tartt
"Goldfinch"
A book that everyone I know has read, no matter who you ask. This is a book about the power of art and how it - sometimes not at all the way we want it - can change our whole lives. The story begins with thirteen-year-old Theo Decker miraculously surviving an explosion that killed his mother. Without a single soulmate in the whole world, he wanders around other people's houses and families - from New York to Las Vegas - and his only consolation, which, however, almost leads to his death, is the masterpiece of a Dutch master he stole from a museum. An amazingly fascinating book that you can't put down - I'm not surprised by its popularity. And this thick volume is ideal for taking with you on a business trip or long trip.
Aleksey Ivanov
“Tobol. Many invited"
A large historical novel about Siberia during the time of Peter the Great, recreating the image of the era. Ivanov is that modern writer whose new book I immediately rush to read as soon as it comes out. I like how Ivanov himself talks about his approach: “There is a historical truth that historians stand for, that is, how everything actually happened, in real sequence, supported by documents. There is a prerogative of politics - this is an ideology that is most often formed in modern times, and then artificially introduced into the past in order to make the current ideology more legitimate. But there is also the work of a writer - an artistic understanding of the era... As a writer, I do not introduce ideology into historical works, I focus on the image. And for the sake of the image, sometimes you need to deviate from the historical basis.”
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
"Messrs. Golovlevs"
“Having taken off his robe and wearing only his shirt, he scurried back and forth through the hotly heated room, stopping from time to time, going up to the table, groping for the damask in the dark, and starting walking again. He drank his first glasses with jokes, voluptuously sucking in the burning moisture; but little by little the heart beat quickened, the head lit up - and the tongue began to mutter something incoherent. The dulled imagination tried to create some images, the deadened memory tried to break into the region of the past, but the images came out torn, meaningless, and the past did not respond with a single memory, neither bitter nor bright, as if a thick wall had stood between it and the present moment once and for all.
Before him was only the present in the form of a tightly locked prison, in which both the idea of space and the idea of time had sunk without a trace. A room, a stove, three windows in the outer wall, a creaky wooden bed with a thin trampled mattress on it, a table with damask standing on it - the thought had not even been thought of to any other horizons.” The latest themed issue of Snob magazine? No! 1875 Saltykov-Shchedrin. The best description of a hangover in Russian literature.
Dmitry Bykov
Dmitry Bykov’s book “Soviet Literature. A Short Course" is more than three dozen essays about Soviet writers, from Maxim Gorky and Isaac Babel to Bella Akhmadulina and Boris Strugatsky. It is based on materials from lessons for high school students and lectures for students. I even like the titles of the chapters themselves: “A Man of My Own” - about Gorky, “Battleship “Frivolous”” - about Lunacharsky, “I Can” - about Akhmatova, “Translation from the Unknown” about Green, “The Wild Don” - about Sholokhov. Somewhere Bykov talks about the biography and works in general, somewhere he simply gives a critical assessment, somewhere he retells the text, and sometimes he dwells on only one work of the author - and everything adds up to an amazing flow of information, thoughts and feelings, life itself.
The main impulse while reading is to run and sort through (and put on the shelves in a different order) all the Soviet classics at home. This is precisely what Dmitry Bykov writes about the USSR: “In order for this country to emerge, it first required a lot of devastation and fratricide, and then rapid totalitarian modernization. This modernization was accompanied by priority attention to the development of science and culture - equally unfree, but over time they learned to lead a double life. Soviet culture was the product of this enthusiasm, fear, compromise, search for Aesopian speech - despite the fact that it did not know market oppression at all and depended only on the ideological situation, and no one obliged it to curry favor with the mass reader. The resulting product deserves study, regardless of quality - no culture in the world has known such conditions for seventy years.”
Alexander Kuprin
Selected Works
Selected works of Kuprin were published many times and in different publishing houses. My favorite is the beautiful yellow book of “Fiction” (1985) with an introductory article by the compiler Oleg Mikhailov (he is also the author of “Kuprin” in the “ZhZL” series), in which he recalls how Repin visited Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana ( “small, fast, reddish, with a graying goatee”).
In the evening, when relatives gathered in the hall with fruit, Repin asked Lev Nikolaevich to read something out loud. “He thought for a while: “Of course, Kuprina... Two short stories - “Night Shift” and “Allez!” Tolstoy read incomparably. Simple, without a hint of theatricality and even as if without expression. Without emphasizing anything, without highlighting anything, he seemed to give the writer the opportunity to tell the story himself... Having finished reading “Night Shift,” Tolstoy pointed to some places that he especially liked, adding: “You will not find anything like this in anyone else.”<...>Then Tolstoy began to read “Allez!” - a touching story about a little circus rider. But when he came to the suicide scene, his slightly alto voice began to tremble. Tolstoy put down the paperback book, took a foulard scarf from the pocket of his gray cotton blouse and brought it to his eyes. The story “Allez!” was never finished.”
Donald Rayfield
"The Life of Anton Chekhov"
“Three years spent searching, deciphering and understanding the documents convinced me that nothing in these archives can either discredit or vulgarize Chekhov,” wrote British literary critic Donald Rayfield about Chekhov. Any biography is partly fiction, which, nevertheless, must be linked to documentary data.
In the biography of the writer, an attempt was made to expand the list of sources used, so that his figure became even more ambiguous. But neither genius nor charm in Chekhov diminished. Rayfield describes how Chekhov was constantly burdened by the irreconcilability of the artist's interests with his obligations to family and friends. This book is also a study of the talented and sensitive intelligentsia of the late nineteenth century, one of the most intense and controversial periods in the cultural and political life of Russia.
The Museum of Moscow has opened an exhibition “The ABC of the Museum”, telling about the life of Moscow in different eras. The exhibition divided the Moscow world not by historical periods, but by letter, combining sometimes the most unexpected objects. Director of the Museum of Moscow Alina Saprykina, in an interview with Anna Kocharova, spoke about how the city museum “communicates” with visitors, how it reacts to the changing Moscow and the turbulent life of the metropolis.
— Why did the museum decide to present its collection in such an unusual form - the alphabet?
— Our collection is one of the largest - there are more than a million items in it - and it is very diverse. Typically, a museum, depending on its profile, collects certain materials. In this sense, we are unique because we collect everything related to the life of the city and its citizens.
The Museum of Moscow will open the exhibition "The ABC of the Museum"Museum visitors will go on a journey through a labyrinth of 2,000 exhibits, including unique archaeological finds made in the capital, gifts to the city for the 800th anniversary, which was celebrated in 1947, as well as documents and personal belongings of famous Muscovites.— Why did you decide to present your collection now?
“It seemed to me that it was very important to do this right now.” The Museum of Moscow turns 120 this year. The museum has an interesting but difficult fate. He changed the name four times, the site five times. It always reflected the city and changed along with Moscow.
From the Museum of Municipal Utilities it turned into the Museum of Moscow that we see today. It was always located in some special buildings - in the Krestovskaya water tower, in the Sukharev Tower, now here, in the Provision Warehouses, in one of the best architectural complexes of the capital.
The museum moved to these buildings for several years, finally transporting the collection in 2011. Since 2013, during the three years of my work, we have made and agreed on a project for the restoration of an architectural monument, developed a sketch of adaptation for a modern multifunctional museum complex, and at the same time expanded the formats of museum work, opened new directions: a cafe, a children's center, a lecture hall, a cinema, a souvenir shop , a courtyard with a stage for concerts and much more. Of course, in this anniversary year we want to talk about both the history of the museum and the future.
In the future, we would like to see in the three buildings a permanent exhibition (which, by the way, the museum has not had since 1949), dedicated to the development of Moscow, and halls for temporary exhibitions, and open storage. A collection as amazing as ours should not be available only to a select few. It can “work” and be presented to a wide range of visitors. And the ABC of the Museum exhibition is, to some extent, a “rehearsal” of this open storage. Our entire friendly team of curators worked on the project together with curators, architects, and designers.
— How was your collection formed?
— Largely due to gifts either from the city or from the townspeople themselves. These are things from philanthropic merchant and noble pre-revolutionary families, things of the Soviet elite and bohemians. Famous people and ordinary Muscovites donated their entire collections - we have about 400 such personal collections.
— Do the townspeople continue to donate their belongings to the museum?
- Certainly. Personal additions were associated with the exhibition dedicated to the anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. We then made a separate showcase and invited people to bring their family heirlooms related to the war. It was interesting to watch how the display was constantly changing. People brought school essays, military IDs even with traces of blood, children's toys, photographs, letters. When you encounter historical material in this way, completely different sensations arise.
Our most important addition in recent months is archaeological finds as part of the “My Street” program. We have probably never reacted to what is happening so quickly before. At the exhibition "Tverskaya, and not only" we are showing 100 finds out of 2 thousand that were discovered.
At the exhibition you can see a counterfeiter's tool of the 17th century, which was found in the old pavement on Tverskaya. This is one of the strangest items. And then a variety of things - from small tiles to axes, buckets, tombstones, jewelry, dishes. We exhibited two window grilles of the house on Myasnitskaya Street, which were made according to Shekhtel’s design: before and after restoration - showing what happens to an item before it enters the museum’s collection.
We are interested in reflecting the life of the city in simple details, very touching and understandable. We try to do this in a modern way, we collaborate with young curators and architects, designers, and come up with additional educational and interactive programs for exhibitions. For example, at our exhibition “The ABC of the Museum” in the “restoration” section, restorers come according to a certain schedule and work right in the exhibition hall - this is part of the exhibition.
— What do you think a city museum should be like today?
— It must be multifunctional, open, friendly, must preserve memory, reconcile everyone with everyone, respond to current changes, be a conductor of all the best that the city has. There are classical museums, but we are more than a museum. The City Museum is a cultural, urban, and social center. We are very connected, on the one hand, with history and heritage, on the other hand, with the real city and people around, and this means constant movement, life.
— Now people have become actively interested in the history of Moscow, city excursions and walks are popular. Why was there such interest?
— In our rapidly changing world, people are looking for rootedness, a foundation. I want stability, I want to feel like a continuation of something: a long time and a large space.
In our museum we provide both. The museum itself is not just one location. We hold exhibitions on boulevards, in passages, in the subway, and work in urban environments. Unlike other museums, where the subject is art, history, technology or something else, our subject is the city that is around us. Our exhibit is Moscow.
— When is it worth thinking about museumification of Moscow at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries?
— Museumification is a continuous process. Of course, we collect in our collection items related to today: the urban environment, design, fashion, music, cinema, art. Objects of everyday life are quite difficult to choose - after all, you want to guess the most typical things for the time. Previously, it was easier to “catch” such items. Everyone wore, for example, “semolina” boots or used Riga cosmetics, bought Burda magazines, and city officials, for example, wore “pie hats.”
Now it’s difficult for us to see ourselves from the outside. Clothes, phones, bicycles, books, photos - all this, like one hundred and twenty years ago, the Museum of Moscow continues to collect, although some of it is already in digital form or printed on a 3D printer. We live in a metropolis in the 21st century.
Before we talk about the scale of the heroine’s personality, a few details about the museum, which she successfully and selflessly runs. The Museum of Moscow is one of the oldest in the city, it is 121 years old. It opened on December 1, 1896 on the initiative of the Moscow Duma and was located in one of the Krestovsky water towers at the Riga outpost. When the museum was created, there was only one employee - the caretaker of the tower. He is also the exhibition curator and tour guide. Now the museum staff exceeds 400 people, it is under the jurisdiction of the capital’s Department of Culture, and in its care is one of the largest collections in Russia - more than 1 million artifacts - items related to the history of Moscow: paintings, graphics, photographs, maps, plans, posters , layouts, documents, household items, clothing and even cars.
But Moscow is not only history. This is also the modern life of the city, which the museum now reflects. Recently, the Museum of Moscow has become a fashionable place where the whole family comes. In fact, the museum has a long and difficult history; it changed its name, location, and concept several times. But since 2010, his “wanderings” ended, he received a worthy site in the center of the capital - Provision Warehouses - and successfully synthesized his past. Now the Museum of Moscow is one of the five most visited museums in Moscow. A modern city museum is being created here, and in this regard it competes with similar calling cards of world capitals - the Museum of London, the Museum of Paris, the Museum of New York, the Berlin Museum, the Amsterdam Museum, the Singapore Museum, the Shanghai Museum, the Tokyo Museum, the Mexico City Museum and others.
“We unite fifth-generation Muscovites with migrants or people who have just arrived, young people...”
Marie Claire: You got the museum 4.5 years ago. What condition was he in then and what was done?
Alina Saprykina: The Museum of Moscow spent a lot of time and effort moving to the Provision Warehouses and seemed to be lost for the city. We were faced with the task of a complete restart. My idea was that today, in the 21st century, we need to talk about Moscow in a cheerful and interesting way, with the involvement of young artists, architects, and designers. We began to create a progressive city museum that would connect contemporary art with tradition, history with the avant-garde, and power with citizens. Our guidelines: on the one hand, constantly moving and developing Moscow, on the other hand, new models of such museums. We all, directors and curators, communicate and are part of an international union - the youngest in the world of museums. Every year we get together and discuss where we are moving and how. In 2015, everyone met in Moscow. Experts came from all over the world. At this conference we defended our new concept to our colleagues.
What is the idea behind the concept?
Most importantly, city museums are designed to unite people. These are multifunctional sites, and they are created with the participation of the residents themselves. That's when they are more modern than others. And this means that we must be dynamic. That is, something arises, some idea is hanging in the air in the city, and we have already implemented it. And this is done not only through exhibitions and excursions. These include lecture halls, educational programs, forums, and multimedia projects. Experiments and new genres begin to live here, for example, when an exhibition is held together with a theatrical performance. In general, in four and a half years we opened a cinema, a lecture hall, a children's center, updated the city excursion bureau, adding a program of new walking and bus tours around Moscow, revived the publishing program, opened a cafe and a souvenir shop. The museum's courtyard has turned into a living space where festivals, film screenings, flea markets, and children's parties are held. Over the past years, we have improved the work of the branches: the Moscow Museum of Archeology, the Old English Court, the Vlahernskoe-Kuzminki Estate, and the Lefortovo History Museum. We opened a new branch - the Gilyarovsky Center. We also took part in the creation of the Underground Museum in Zaryadye Park - in a word, our activities can be listed for a long time.
“All this new wave, hippies, punks, rockers, shaved temples, metalheads. It'll be back soon. But, of course, not one to one, it transforms"
A woman always tries to express herself: with hairstyle, makeup, clothes. How can this be done with a whole museum?
Both men and women can equally lead a large institution. But a female approach to business has its advantages. For example, a feeling of harmony when you want to make the world around you better. For me, this is to harmoniously connect the history of Moscow with the present Moscow and the future Moscow. We create a comfortable, friendly space that is cozy, pleasant and interesting. Everyone from young to old. We unite fifth-generation Muscovites with migrants or people who have just arrived, young people; not only an audience of different ages, but also one of different tastes.
So you are the Moscow Museum of Tolerance?
In a sense, yes. This is what our city lacks: calm, consensus, common values and the ability for people of different views to be on the same territory without aggression and conflicts. If we talk about simple examples, the “Old Apartment” exhibition, which opened in December, turned out to be successful. The adults arrive. They bring teenagers and children and talk about how their life was structured: how it changed over time, how the streets of Moscow changed, what kind of shops there were, how apartments and everyday life changed. It's like traveling in a time machine. For the 870th anniversary of Moscow, we created an exhibition “The History of Moscow for Children and Adults” - it is still open. Here you can see fragments of the first Moscow Kremlin, which we know about from chronicles. The first jewelry, the rarest finds, ancient coins, games, clothes. Watercolors by Apollinary Vasnetsov, who created images of Moscow in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Also the famous reconstructions of the anthropologist Gerasimov - we have not only busts of Ivan the Terrible, Andrei Bogolyubsky, but also, for example, a cast of the head of an ordinary Muscovite who lived a thousand years ago.
Do you have anything on the history of fashion and beauty?
Last year, the “Fashion and Revolution” exhibition, organized jointly with Alexander Vasiliev, was a success. We showed how historical events before, during and after the revolution affected fashion and lifestyle: women's dresses of 1907–1927 were presented there, as well as all the most interesting revolutionary artifacts of Moscow from our storerooms - banners, posters, orders, photos, documents, newsreels. In addition to exhibitions, we host fashion shows of urban clothing and events with young Moscow designers.
“We have long wanted to make an exhibition about the history of women’s underwear. In places it certainly looked incredible.”
How often do you feel fashion repeats itself? What magazines should a modern fashionista look through?
For history, the period for serious rethinking is 50 years. Fashion repeats itself, it seems to me, about once every 30 years. This year, for example, we are organizing an exhibition about Moscow subcultures of the late twentieth century. First of all, about fashion and music. All this new wave, hippies, punks, rockers, shaved temples, metalheads. It'll be back soon. But, of course, not one to one, it transforms. The most fashionable Russian designer in the world now - Gosha Rubchinsky - is also about the fashion of the urban outskirts of the late 80s: the emergence of sports clubs, guys in tracksuits, with sports bags. This image is now a big success.
Has our women's national costume ever included a line of erotic lingerie?
We have long wanted to make an exhibition about the history of women's underwear. In some places it looked, of course, incredible. It's almost a cabinet of curiosities. Until a certain time, all these feminine tricks did not look particularly erotic. But clothes are always, in one way or another, a reflection of something larger. When innovations began under Peter I, Russian women began to take a more active part in public life, in general the role of women changed greatly, and outfits changed significantly - before that, our ladies amazed foreigners with their wild makeup: heavily painted eyebrows, bright blush, blackened teeth, clothing in several layers. The matryoshka doll and the Dymkovo toy partially retain this heritage. In general, it is very interesting to compare today's life with the life of our predecessors. This, among other things, is what our Moscow Museum does.
Do not miss!
"Spring Plane" (March). Exhibition of artist and designer Olga Soldatova. A lyrical statement about Moscow, based on socialist utopia and the modernist canon of beauty.
“Tragedy in the Corner” (March–May). Large-scale exhibition of young Russian artists. The project is aimed at identifying current trends in art.
“Three stories of the Proviantskys” (April). The Museum of Moscow pays tribute to its unique complex and invites you to remember its history.
“House of Football” (June–July). A large-scale project for the FIFA World Cup.
Also in 2018, the museum will host at least two festivals - “Commission” (Moscow Comics Festival) and “Typomania” (the largest forum of graphic designers working with the urban environment).
A detailed program of events for the Museum of Moscow is available on the website mosmuseum.ru
And it's all about her
Alina Saprykina
Family status: married, three children
Education: Faculty of Philosophy and Graduate School of Moscow State University. M.V.Lomonosova
Career: participated in the creation and development of Moscow’s first art cluster Artplay, in the opening and projects of the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, organized more than 100 exhibitions and large-scale cultural events. Winner of the Caryatid Prize in the field of cultural management (2012). Winner of the “Made in Russia” award in the “Museum Business” category (2014). She was awarded the Shuvalov medal of the Russian Academy of Arts (2014). Nominee in the “Museum of the Year” category of The Art Newspaper Russia award (2016).
Awarded the Certificate of Honor of the Moscow City Duma “For services to the city community” (2017)
Perfume: Penhaligon's fragrances
Favorite clothing brand: Jil Sander
Automobile: Mercedes
Favorite author: Chekhov
Director of the Museum of Moscow Alina Saprykina talks about the future of museums, the capital of the 22nd century and the differences between a Moscow visitor and a foreigner.
The Museum of Moscow is a place that connects history and modernity in one space and talks about what is happening in the city right now. The museum space freely hosts museum formats, educational programs, theatrical performances, film screenings and concerts, flea markets, food markets, festivals, competitions and fashion shows.
— The largest festival “Intermuseum 2017” has ended in Moscow, in which more than 150 museums from all over the country took part. This year its theme is “Museum of the Future.” How does the Moscow Museum reflect it?
— At the festival we presented a presentation “City Museum - a look into the future,” which reflected the peculiarities of city museums and their role today. The city museum is a special format. On the one hand, this is a museum, and on the other, a platform dedicated to a city that is constantly changing and moving. The main memes of the city museum are the events happening to the city and its inhabitants. In our case, the museum is entirely dedicated to Moscow, its uniqueness and diversity.
We are located in the city center, in one of the best architectural complexes of the capital. Provision warehouses are an architectural monument of federal significance. Also under the management of the Museum of Moscow there are small museums - the Old English Court, the Museum of Archeology of Moscow, the Lefortovo History Museum. And also the Vlahernskoe-Kuzminki estate. Today, the Museum of Moscow is a space with storage, exhibition displays and excursion programs, as well as a multidisciplinary educational center that hosts lectures, master classes, round tables, and educational programs. A place where not only museum formats live freely, but also theater, cinema and much more. We host theatrical performances, film screenings, flea markets, food markets, festivals, competitions and fashion shows.
Urban fashion, art, music, literature - everything begins to live here, in the space of the museum
We don’t just think about what the museum will be like tomorrow, but we become, by and large, a reflection of Moscow, its mirror. Moreover, our task is to connect the capitals yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Tell stories and look into the future
— A modern museum tries to cover as many areas as possible: exhibition projects, lectures, and scientific work. Can one complement the other and how to combine research work without losing visitors?
— Research work does not happen on its own. This is always the study of a particular topic, which must be implemented in a specific museum product. For example, we are soon opening an exhibition “Moscow through the eyes of foreigners”, and our curatorial group is engaged in research work in this area, collects and analyzes sources related to the 18th-19th centuries (this is the period that will be shown at the exhibition), systematizes information, looking for something new on the topic.
The concept and content of the project are always primary. Then comes work with the collection and detailed research work. And not the other way around, when a museum would show collectibles and archives simply because it has them.
As for the museum as an educational institution, it works with the most difficult modern task - it helps a person navigate information and independently acquire complex ideas about the world. In an urban environment, for example, design and navigation help us. But a person of the 21st century lives in two worlds - real and virtual. The virtual world is comparable in size to the real one and provides a huge amount of information, which is becoming more and more and more difficult to understand.
Museums, as places for storing artifacts of the real world and as places for structuring information in the virtual world, it seems to me, will eventually become the platforms that will connect these worlds. For example, we are trying to look into the future and see what Moscow will be like tomorrow. For what? To do everything in our power today to make life better in the future. To convey to the future the history of Moscow, which our museum has been keeping for 120 years.
We are trying to look into the future and see what Moscow will be like tomorrow. For what? To do everything in our power today to make life better in the future. To convey to the future the history of Moscow, which our museum has been keeping for 120 years
— Should a museum be a storyteller?
— Museum exhibitions should tell stories. It's like writing movie scripts. Then, it all depends on the technical capabilities of implementation and many other factors.
— If you imagine, for example, the year 2047, what kind of Moscow do you see?
— For the 120th anniversary of the Museum of Moscow, a cartoon was shot with the following version: “Artificial intelligence becomes the mayor of Moscow, the twenty-fifth transport ring was launched, and the Museum of Moscow remains the main city museum.” Or you see in the corner - this is the work of Konstantin Batynkov “Moscow, 2117”. At our request, the artist painted the capital a hundred years later. This is futurology, a personal artistic statement, but that is why it is valuable for us: you and I see a perfect cosmic metropolis - and, moreover, we recognize Moscow.
The Museum of Moscow, collecting everything related to Moscow, and possessing a unique collection of one million items, consisting of maps, plans, paintings, graphics, photos, models, engravings, documents, everyday objects, books and much more - so here , the museum also preserves how our ancestors tried to answer such questions. For example, there is a well-known series of postcards “Moscow of the Future”, made in 1913 by order of the Einem factory and showing Moscow in 2013. This is one of my favorite pieces in our collection.
What do I personally think about the future? The city will continue to develop, the pace will, of course, increase. It will preserve the heritage and architecture. He will implement new technologies. People will become more tolerant of each other, otherwise nothing will come of it. By the way, what strikes foreigners most is that Moscow provides so many opportunities and combines so many things. As if this is not a city, but a layer cake in which such different people live. where history and modernity coexist, and new ideas are born at the intersection. It seems to me that this uniqueness is what leads us into the future.
Museum of Moscow - museum of the city, micromodel of Moscow
— Can the museum site turn into an urban environment, go out into open spaces and get into a “non-sterile” atmosphere for exhibition exhibits and projects?
— There are museums of art, natural science, music, military history, literature, memorial... And the City Museum - there is always one in every city. Each metropolis and capital has its own - New York, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Shanghai. By the way, city museums are very different, and each of them, like a mirror, reflects its city. Imagine a micromodel of the city, reflecting its structure in miniature. This is how a city museum should be. And he should actively go out into the open environment with exhibitions and ideas.
For city residents this museum is like a home, and for tourists it is an opportunity to come into contact with something real, alive
— How to compare the main art gallery of the city and the main city museum, for example?
— Let’s try it using the example of travel. As we know, two types of travel are common: the first is to buy a tourist package and go to another country with a package of excursions and a guide, or the second is to stay with local residents. With the opportunity to attend a birthday or wedding, try home cooking, feel the specialness and energy of this place. Thus, the art gallery will give you the opportunity to see the best masterpieces stored in the city. And the city museum is a platform that immerses you in the history plus the modern atmosphere of the place. For residents, this museum is like a home, and for tourists, it is an opportunity to come into contact with something important for their understanding, as well as real, living things that are happening in the city right now.
Muscovites and foreigners
— Which exhibitions or exhibits arouse the greatest interest among visitors - historical or modern?
— Complex issue. Is our exhibition “Moscow Thaw” historical or modern? This is a project that told why we became what we are now, what categories we think in, how these concepts were formed, what ideals we live by and why. The exhibition answered questions about how the events of a particular time influenced people: the first human flight into space, the first Moscow Film Festival, the first rock festival, the opening of the Institute of Genetics, and so on. It was a project about Moscow now, but it talked about the thaw then.
We are currently working on the “Three Festivals” exhibition, dedicated, on the one hand, to the future World Festival of Youth and Students in Sochi. On the other hand, the exhibition will tell about the generations of the 1950s and 1980s and what the previous youth and student festivals held in Moscow were like.
In the exhibition “Moscow. Fashion and Revolution,” which recently closed, we showed the revolution, ten years before the events and ten years after, from 1907 to 1927. It was done in modern language, but about a historical era. There is always a connection. Interesting connection.
— Is there a feature of the Moscow viewer that distinguishes Muscovites from other museum visitors?
— We always say that the task of the Museum of Moscow is to unite different audiences, given that everyone has their own preferences. For example, Muscovites 60 plus are most often nostalgic for a bygone city and love exhibitions dedicated to their time, a Moscow that no longer exists. Children are interested in everything that is happening in the city right now, especially what they can get involved in and participate in.
Muscovites perceive the city through their lives. Adults - through memories, children - through their active experience. At exhibitions we create separate routes for children and adults. An example is our exhibition “History of Moscow for Children and Adults”. These two categories are looking for different things, and the museum strives to help the visitor find what they are looking for.
Muscovites perceive the city through their lives. Adults - through memories, children - through the opportunity to participate in something
— How do foreigners perceive the museum?
— For foreigners, a visit to our museum is a contact with a city that they, as a rule, have seen more than once in films, in photographs, and about which they have already formed some idea. When visiting us, guests find themselves behind the scenes of a diverse metropolis with a rich and interesting history and rediscover Moscow. The feeling of discovery is the tourists. Muscovites are a sense of belonging.
Opportunity to touch, create or participate
— Speaking of belonging. Are visitors allowed to take photographs and touch exhibits?
— Here you can take photographs, and we have exhibitions where you can touch the exhibits. These are copies, often indistinguishable from the original. Nowadays in museums there are exhibits that you can touch, costumes that you can wear, moreover, there are exhibitions in the production of which you can participate.
Go on the most unusual excursions around the museum or the area where it is located, draw a book, create a cartoon, make a theatrical production, take part in it - today everything is possible in the museum
You can get acquainted with the exhibition with the help of a guide. Here, too, there is a wide choice - ask an ordinary guide, or a candidate of sciences, or even the curator-author of the exhibition himself, or maybe even a curator, and then go with him to see how the museum collection is organized. In the museum you can go to the cinema, attend a lecture, buy rare books in the souvenir shop, and have a delicious lunch. You can celebrate a birthday at the museum by arranging an intricate quest around the exhibition for invited guests. This summer there is an opportunity to visit the museum at a children's camp. You can lie down on the lawn in the yard and just sunbathe. Recently, brides and grooms began to come to us and take pictures in the courtyard against the backdrop of buildings - the Provision Warehouses as a rare example of the Empire style, architect Vasily Stasov, 1835, this is probably quite good.
Go on the most unusual excursions around the museum or the area where it is located, draw a book, create a cartoon, make a theatrical production, take part in it - today everything is possible in the museum.
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