The Russia-Ukraine war has already begun affecting the art world, as the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow announced halting all exhibitions till the war continues.
The Garage Museum is one of the most prominent contemporary art museums in Moscow. It was founded in 2008 by art collection Dasha Zhukova and her partner and collector Roman Abramovich. The Garage was so-named due to the site of the museum, a former bus garage. Since then, the museum has expanded to an exquisite building, designed by Rem Koolhaas, at Gorky Park.
The museum had already announced exhibitions by multiple artists, including Anne Imhof, Helen Marten, Lydia Masterkova and Saodat Ismailova. Lydia Masterkova was the first artist scheduled to have an exhibition at the museum on March 16. This was to be followed by Anne Imhof‘s exhibition, to be organized at the museum on April 5, to celebrate the Golden Lion-winner (Venice Biennale, 2017) artist’s works.
In their press statement announcing the halting of exhibitions, the Garage Museum said that they would “stop work on all exhibitions until the human and political tragedy that is unfolding in Ukraine has ceased“. Regarding the artists already slated for exhibitions, the museum said that it will fulfil the “obligations to the artists whose projects are being postponed and who have worked with us with trust and enthusiasm.”
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Meanwhile, prominent Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson also pre-emptively closed his exhibition at the Moscow-based GES-2 Museum. While the exhibition was supposed to run till March 13, Kjartansson expressed his inability to showcase his art when “this horror begins”.
