MANEGE IN 2021
The first ever major solo exhibition in Russia featuring legendary Korean artist Lee Bul. Her work provides a true insight into contemporary art in South Korea and Asia as a whole. The exhibition presented Lee Bul’s works over the past 15 years. They were first shown together with the works of Russian avant-gardists, which became the source of her inspiration.
Curator: Sunjung Kim
Co-Curator: SooJin Lee
Project Initiator and Director: Anna Kirikova
Coordinator: Olga Romanova
Architectural design: Agnia Sterligova (Planet 9)
The heart of the exhibition was a large-scale research project that took more than two years. Its purpose was to study the possibilities of presenting rare sculptures and sculptures that are particularly significant for Russia dating from the second half of the 18th to the early 20th century.
For the first time, the history of the establishment of a national sculptural school, along with the work of the most prominent masters, eras, styles, and genres of Russian plastic arts, has been presented through a wide range of examples of Russian sculpture, selected from the collections of the State Russian Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Hermitage and many other museums.
The architectural solutions envisaged the transformation of the exhibition space of Manege into an archetype of a theatre from imperial Russia. Filling the space with sounds of opera created another dimension, allowing viewers to see the beauty and aesthetic self-sufficiency of the art form of sculpture from another angle.
Curatorial team: Elena Karpova, Natalia Logdachyova, Evelina Tarasova, Vladimir Yevseyev, Elizaveta Pavlycheva
Concept: Pavel Prigara
Artistic design: Vasily Barkhatov
Architectural design: Aleksandr Kriventsov (Tsirkul Creative Studio)
A solo exhibition by the Russian art group Recycle. Andrey Blokhin and Georgy Kuznetsov continued to explore the cultural and visual codes of Homo Virtualis and his world.
The project New Nature spotlighted the artists’ interactive sculptures and dynamic art objects that turned viewers into participants in a virtual, technological performance.
A separate website became the virtual dimension of the exhibition and the main portal into the futuristic world of Recycle Group: recyclexmanege.com.
The exhibition reopened in December at Winzavod (Moscow).
There were no battles at the Manege exhibition, no heart-wrenching dramas, intense passions, heightened emotions, or alarming mysticism. The exhibition Serenity and Delight is an idyllic story of art that never made it to the era of total transformation.
The exhibition at Manege spotlighted works by more than 100 Russian artists (including Vladimir Borovikovsky and Vasily Tropinin, Sylvester Schedrin and Orest Kiprensky, Fyodor Tolstoy and Karl Bryullov, Ivan Shishkin and Arkhip Kuindzhi, Mikhail Nesterov and Viktor Borisov-Musatov) from the collections of 36 leading museums in Russia and abroad.
Curator: Semyon Mikhailovsky
Composer: Anton Batagov
Coordinator: Svetlana Zenina
Architectural design: Agnia Sterligova, Nadezhda Egereva (Planet 9)
In continuing the New Ruins series of outdoor projects, Manege and curator Maxim Ima presented the third in the series of joint outdoor exhibitions.
In the New Ruins. Glass project, artists used scratching as the foundational approach. It is one of the most vandalistic forms of graffiti, consisting of scratching words or images into a surface.
Curator: Maxim Ima
Artists: Vladimir Abikh, Andrey Berger, Marina Koldobskaya, Nadezhda Kosinskaya, Pokras Lampas, Vitaly Pushnitsky, Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai, Yury Shtapakov, A.D.E.D., Nikita Dusto, GIWE, Sergey Xeat8, Vandal Karlos, 0331c
The project’s name refers to a popular interregional tourist route that connects the Northwest Regions of Russia, known for their monuments of history, culture, and natural sights.
The exhibition’s designers created expressive artistic images in the form of 11 silver beads comprising a necklace. Each bead, as a component part of a unified conceptual and artistic whole, was placed in a position relative to its actual location in the Northwest Regions.
Distinguished artists, actors, directors, figures in the world of art and science, and cosmonauts were invited to participate in the project. Each of them created their own thematic design connected with their chosen region.
The exhibition later opened up at Moscow’s VDNKh (Exhibition of National Economic Achievements).
Museum Line program director and deputy director of the Manege Central Exhibition Hall: Anna Yalova
Artist: Andrey Punin (ARKI)
Coordinator: Yekaterina Zotkina
This is Manege’s traditional street installation at the rear of the building for New Year’s 2022. This year’s project creator is artist Asya Marakulina.
«New Year’s, like any threshold, is a time not only to celebrate and tie up loose ends, but also a time to reflect, to ask questions of oneself, of society, and of the state. This year, like last year, was difficult for many. Many questions remain unanswered and the entire world is in a state of uncertainty. We have become used to running away from this, trying to seek an answer as soon as possible, to again find a familiar and stable rhythm. I propose we legitimize this condition and look at the situation objectively. Yes, we have many unanswered questions, and yes, we have become suspended in uncertainty and we are in a very challenging time. How long will it last? No one can say for sure. We must accept it as it is, although we, too, long for a celebration and a change for the better — which is not a contradiction at all».
Asya Marakulina
In the second half of 2021, the Museum of 20th-and 21st-Century St Petersburg Art (MISP) presented two large-scale exhibition projects in connection with the 30th anniversary of its collection.
The first of these celebratory exhibitions, Verses/Elements of Petersburg, was a reflection of the historical evolution of the landscape genre from the 1930s to today. The second exhibition, The Complex Spectacle, showed visitors the new arrivals that have become part of the museum’s collection over the past 10 years.
The Looking Glass and Through It
German Yegoshin. Without Speaking
Yan Antonyshev. In the City’s Power
Pyotr Reichet. Multitude
One Hundred Years Long. From the Artistic Dynasties cycle
Mikhail Semyonov. The Blind Rain
Grigory Grinberg. Across Time
Ivan Sotnikov. Golden Section. 60 х 100
Vladimir Dolgopolov. In Earthly Words
Viktor Danilov. Playing in Earnest
Yuri Penushkin. More Than Love
Konstantin Kartashevsky. Hypervolumes
Project INTERVAL
Alexander Kipsone. Cultural Dyslexia
Depicting Life: Boris Vlasov and Alexander Skalozubov
Svetlana Fadeenko. The Poetry of Being
Vladimir Zagorov. Journey Along the Coast. What Is Nearby
Verses/Elements of Petersburg
The Complex Spectacle
“MISP’s collection has its own notable and distinctive cultural profile. It presents visual art from St. Petersburg, art that examines the modern processes encountered in our city. This sets MISP apart from all other museums and defines its place in the cultural space of the city on the Neva.”
Maria Dzhigarkhanyan,
Director of the Museum of 20-th and 21-st Century St. Petersburg Art
In 2021, Manege Central Exhibition Hall was named Museum of its excellence in staging spectacular, popular exhibitions, its bold concepts, and its modern exhibition design”.
The exhibition project Future Lab. Kinetic Art in Russia was announced as the winner of the prize “Innovation 2021” in the category of Project of the Year.
This joint project between Manege and the Tretyakov Gallery was shown in St. Petersburg in 2020 and opened in Moscow on Krymsky Val last spring. The exhibition brought together about 500 works from kinetic artists in a retrospective covering 100 years of one of the most significant and at the same time least studied movements in the history of Russian art.
Project curator: Yulia Aksyonova
Project co-curators: Anna Koleichuk, Andrey Smirnov
Assistant curator: Alisa Prokhorova
Architect: Ksenia Lukyanova
Coordinators: Yelizaveta Pavlycheva, Polina Kravchenko, Renata Urusova
Producer: Anna Yalova
For every project, Manege develops a supplemental educational program and organizes discussions with leading specialists and figures in the spheres of culture and science from all over the world. For the exhibitions we held in 2021, we organized talks on the themes of modern technology, digital art, the world of the future, modern medicine, and the classical sculpture, art, music, and philosophy of the 19th century.
We would like to express our gratitude to the speakers and guests at our lectures!
Adviser to the director of Manege on educational activities: Vera Reichet
An international online platform for the exchange of ideas about and interpretations of reality.
The NEW NOW platform is dedicated to helping us make sense of what is going on in our ever-changing world through the experience and knowledge of leading contemporary thinkers. Together with the invited speakers – cultural theorists, philosophers, anthropologists, art curators, and expert practitioners in various spheres – we will attempt to understand what is occurring on an international scale and describe the overall transformation of the world that is currently underway.
Among the themes for the 2021-2022 season are: corporeality and problems of identity, reality and post-truth, technology and the limits of freedom, the environmental situation and neo-mythologism, and transhumanism and mental health.
NEW NOW program creator and director: Anna Kirikova
As part of Manege’s educational program, guests to the exhibition hall were able to hear performances by prominent conductors, musicians, and orchestras, among which were: The Tavrichesky International Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Mikhail Golikov), The St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Sergey Stadler), Mikhail Mishchenko, Kedr Livansky, Ishome, and others.
For the Manege Documentary program, Manege presented, for the first time in Russia, a new film by French artist JR. The film was shown at a closed screening at the Angleterre cinema.
In his most recent film, JR turns the camera on his own work as he builds some of his most monumental projects. From early illicit graffiti videos captured on Paris rooftops at night, to the US-Mexico border, to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, to a current collaboration at a California supermax prison, the film follows JR as he turns these communities inside out, turning images of residents into eye-catching and immersive art installations.
Creator of the Manege Documentary program:
Anna Kirikova
The exhibition catalogue for Russian Classical Sculpture: From Shubin to Matveyev was published as part of the “Independent Artists” project sponsored by the Admiral Logistics Group. The book is a truly valuable addition to the sparse ranks of studies of Russian sculpture, having united academic and artistic material on both famous works and lesser-known pieces by almost-forgotten masters of the Russian school of sculpture.
The catalogue’s introductions were written by Vladimir Gusev (director of the Russian Museum) and Pavel Prigara (director of Manege Central Exhibition Hall). The introductory article was penned by Yelena Karpova (distinguished expert from the State Russian Museum and head of the project’s curatorial group).
Graphic design: Andrei Shelyutto, Irina Chekmaryova (Faro Studio)
In 2020, the Manege team launched new interactive formats for exhibitions: art mediations and moving mediations. We continued diligently developing the project in 2021.
Art mediation is an interactive format for learning about an exhibition. Not only do participants receive information about the exhibition, but they are also able to share their impressions and interpretations and to discuss what they have seen with other guests.
A moving mediation, as opposed to a typical mediation, implies learning about the world of art through work with one’s own body, a search for balance. In studying the exhibition space, guests share their impressions through movement and tactile sensations.
Heads of Manege’s School of Mediation: Vera Reichet, Natalya Vasilyeva
Mediators: Anna Abramova, Vlada Astafyeva, Yekaterina Bespalova, Valeria Godova, Ksenia Zakharko, Irina Kazantseva
Mediations for children and teens: Ksenia Zakharko
Dynamic mediations: Alyona Ageyeva
In this unique project, visitors can tour the exhibition hall at night after closing, attend special screenings and musical performances, and sleep over and have breakfast at Manege.
In 2021 the fifth Night at Manege took place at the NEW NATURE exhibition. Visitors were able to become part of the crew of a unique science fiction expedition into the distant future.
Project curator: Olga Zaytseva
MANEGE JUNIOR is an educational program at Manege for adolescents ages 12-17. The aim of the project is to create a space where teens can gain knowledge and skills in various areas of contemporary culture
Manege Junior curators: Vera Reichet, Aleksandra Shcherbina
MANEGE KIDS is a program of entertainment for children 7-11 years of age that combines fun interaction with exhibition items, hands-on educational tasks, and interesting games and discussions.
Manege Kids curators: Vera Reichet, Ksenia Zakharko
In 2021, Manege developed a broad-based inclusion program for each of its exhibitions: art mediations for autistic visitors, tours in Russian Sign Language by deaf guides or Manege guides with translations into RSL, and art mediations for the blind and visually impaired using tactile materials, scents, and audio description.
We also prepared informational materials for various categories of visitors: adapted texts in easy-to-read format, social stories, and an audio description guide. Videos of our lectures on YouTube include a translation into RSL.
The Manege team is also working to expand the ways in which we work with visitors who have been in difficult social situations. We continue to work with Nochlezhka and to invite teens from social rehabilitation centers and orphanages to the exhibition hall. This year we also launched a project working with migrant children and teens.
Program curator: Alyona Ageyeva
During the Stillness exhibition, the team at Manege invited anyone with an interest to participate in drawing classes taught by instructors from the Repin St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. This was in continuation of the historical tradition of bringing together future artists and amateurs. For an entire week, project participants created pencil sketches of the sculptures on display at the exhibition in consultation with Academy instructors Nikita Mogilevtsev, Aleksandr Fyodorov, Vladimir Romanov, Yevgeny Khlyunyev, Ivan Pokidyshev, and Anna Anikina.
In 2021, Manege launched its own reading club, which holds its meetings in the exhibition hall. Participants read and discuss topics touched on by contemporary cultural and art theorists. We have read books and articles by British philosopher Mark Fisher, American art critic Hal Foster, Russian philosopher Dmitry Galkin, and many others.
For those who prefer audio, our podcast Listen to Manege is available on Yandex Music, SoundCloud, and Vkontakte.
Program curator: Yaroslav Manakhov
More than 600 volunteers helped us out in 2021! They not only greeted visitors to Manege and helped them navigate the exhibition space, but also conducted individual tours and art mediations.
Manege also cooperates with the organization “Silver Volunteers”, whose members inspire young people with their active lifestyl.
Head of Manege’s Volunteer School: Irina Levashova