ARCHITECTURE:Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is a dynamic cultural institution with an extensive program of exhibitions, publications, and performances. The museum also houses the country’s first archive of Russian contemporary art from the ‘50s through the present. It was established in 2008 by Dasha Zhukova as a non-profit project of The IRIS Foundation.

By Efi Michalarou

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s past and future have always had an important relationship to architecture, in that the organization believes that the spaces it inhabits play a central role in the development of a contemporary approach to making a public museum for art and publics. The organization was initially housed in (and received its name from) the renowned Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage in Moscow, originally designed by the Constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov. In 1990, the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage was listed as an Architectural memorial. In 2001, the bus company vacated the building and the City Hall donated it to the Moscow Hasidic Jewish Community Center for redevelopment, on condition that the Community Center build a public school. The Community Center approached architect Alexey Vorontsov to design the whole project. Before the drafts were completed in 2001, the builders removed the roofing and began disassembling the roof trusses, destroying eight spans. Public intervention suspended further destruction. In 2003, the Community Center and the authorities agreed upon a compromise development plan by Vorontsov that would retain the original exterior walls. A public school, however, was to be completed next to Melnikov’s garage, leaving the Jewish community with an opportunity to build another cultural institution that incorporated the facade of Melnikov’s 1928 building. After years of neglect, work accelerated in the second half of 2007. The garage was fully restored externally in the first half of 2008 complete with 1920-s style lettering on the eastern (entrance) facade; interior work was completed by September 2008. The building was reopened to the public in September as the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, featuring an exhibition of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. In 2012, Garage relocated to Gorky Park, to a temporary pavilion specifically commissioned from award-winning architect Shigeru Ban. A year later, a purpose-built Education Center was opened next to the Pavilion. On 1/5/14, Garage Center for Contemporary Culture changed its name to Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, reflecting the founder’s commitment to providing long-term public access to living artists and art histories. On 12/6/15, Garage welcomed visitors to its first permanent home. The project, led by Rem Koolhaas and Ekaterina Golovatyuk, is a renovation of the 1960s Vremena Goda restaurant located in Moscow’s Gorky Park, turning the Soviet Modernist restaurant built in 1968 into a contemporary museum. Commissioned by Garage founder Dasha Zhukova, the 5,400 square-meter museum offers three levels of open space. New opportunities for programming are generated through diverse exhibition galleries, a screening room, an auditorium, education and research spaces including a creative center for children, a bookshop, a café, and a rooftop terrace.