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| | Arts Calendar / July 5 / Exhibitions |
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| Games Our Ancestors Played |
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 The exhibition tells the story of table games, one of the most popular forms of leisure since ancient times. The author of the "Book of Games" of 1283, the oldest surviving treatise on this fascinating pastime, defined them as "games played while seated": primarily chess, draughts, tafl, backgammon, and tric-trac. Cards and puzzles of all kinds can also be included. Visitors will get to know the history of hobby games, the way they came to our country, the fashion that defined the popularity of some and the decline of interest in others in different periods. Many of the games have survived to the present day, while others have completely disappeared. Well-known rules of some games could have changed considerably: it is known that dice were once used in chess; and there was a variant of the chess game with four players. The display shows one of the quadruple chess sets of 76 figures. Learning to play chess and draughts was a must for future monarchs, while sets of games were used as valuable diplomatic gifts. According to the legend, silver-gilt chess set in the shape of warriors were presented to Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich by the Brandenburg Ambassador Joachim Scultet. The same monarch owned a leisure game set made in the first half of the 17th century by Augsburg master Ulrich Baumgartner and engraver Paul G?ttich. It contains a board not only for chess, but also for draughts, backgammon and nine men’s morris. During the reign of Peter the Great, chess and draughts became an aristocratic pastime – they were part of the programme of Peter's Assemblies. Interestingly, not only did Empress Catherine the Great excel at the strategy of the game, but she also made her own set of chess pieces, which also became an exhibit in the exhibition.
Moscow Kremlin Museums  |
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 The Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents the exhibition Gugong. Opening Seals. Contemporary Art of the People’s Republic of China from the Collection of Alexander Chistyakov. It will showcase the art scene of the People’s Republic of China over the past decades: from the works of nonconformist artists to the so-called Cynical Realism, a recognizable and commercially successful brand of the 2000s. This project continues the MMOMA exhibition programme that aims to explore and display private Russian collections. The show will introduce works from Alexander Chistyakov’s collection, which features leading names of contemporary Chinese art. The works by Chinese artists will be exhibited along with the Russian art from the collection of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Each room of the exhibition will be organized around a particular topic reflected through different periods, trends and narratives of Chinese contemporary art. Most of the works deal with rethinking the national culture and identity in an international context. One of the main influences on contemporary Chinese art was American pop art. It was this movement, that addressed templates and stereotypes, the crisis of consumer society and the problem of the overproduction of images in mass media, that largely set the vector of artistic research after the Cultural Revolution.
Moscow Museum of Modern Art on Gogolevsky bulv |
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| Kaleidoscope of Collections. Rarities of the Museum Collection |
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 The Museum of Contemporary History of Russia collection (former the Museum of the Revolution of the USSR) was formed under the influence of the events taking place in the state. Initially, the museum was created as the museum of the revolutionary and democratic movement, and it saw its main tasks as showing the glorious revolutionary past, the chanting of the fighters against the autocracy, the story about the history of the CPSU (b). However, from the very first days, the museum began to receive not only documentary materials, but also the material relics. The museum actively complicated propaganda porcelain, art lacquers, metal and glass objects symbolizing the struggle of the working class for the fair world. When completing art collections, the plot has always been very important for the museum — the historical event reflected in the particular work, the disclosure of the surrounding life actual themes by artistic means. Thus, the collection of decorative and applied arts was gradually formed. The Museum of the Revolution storages were actively replenished with the gifts from the Soviet and foreign delegations to leaders of the state, prominent political and economic figures of the country, as well as with the products made in the single copy for the opening of various congresses and party conferences. Despite the fact that these items were created by the best masters of their time, not all of them could be exhibited in the permanent exhibition. In different years, the museum staff found many ways to show art relics to visitors: these were exhibitions of gifts, and visible storage of museum collections, and, finally, the exhibition that you see now — “Kaleidoscope of Collections. Rarities of the Museum Collection”.
Museum of Contemporary History of Russia |
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| The Imprint of the Epoch. Vladimir Lagrange |
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 Lumiere Gallery presents the exhibition project “The Imprint of the Epoch. Vladimir Lagrange”, dedicated to the anniversary of the author. Vladimir Lagrange (1939-2022), who would have turned 85, went down in the history of Soviet photography primarily as an outstanding reporter of the “Thaw” era. The sharpness of perception and sensitivity to the heroes of his time became decisive in the work of the master. His lust for life and tireless creative searches have been embodied in a rich visual archive, with which the Lumiere Gallery has been working for more than twenty years. The project was based on little-known works by Lagrange, revealing one of the most productive periods of the author’s work: “Installation of power lines, 1971”, “Intermission in the Kremlin, 1960s”, “Hooray, holidays! 1984”. The presented plots with portraits of workers, images of thawed childhood and essays on the instructions of the publishing house offer a deeper study of the author’s work. The exhibition also featured iconic works beloved by collectors and photography enthusiasts, such as “Goalkeeper, 1961”, “To work. Moscow, 1967”, “In a hurry. The 1960s”, “Young ballerinas, 1962”.
Lumiere Gallery |
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