Garage Travel Grants for International Curators

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art presents Garage Travel Grants for international curators to attend the first Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art.

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art has conducted the largest-ever survey of art practice across Russia in preparation for the first Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art (March 10–May 14, 2017). Presenting works made since 2012—the year of the last Presidential elections—from more than 60 artists from all over the country, the exhibition will capture the zeitgeist of some of the most active and influential figures of the past five years, offering insight into the diversity of social tendencies that constitute the underexplored art scene.

The Triennial will take place in the Museum and the surrounding area of Gorky Park. For the opening of the exhibition, all the participating artists will be invited to Moscow, to facilitate the development of a country-wide, peer-to-peer network. Responding to the lack of resources available to many artists, the project will involve a number of newly-commissioned works, as well as new installations to provide a context for works. For the duration of the exhibition, a weekly program of lectures, roundtable discussions, screenings, and performances by artists, historians, curators, and activists from across the country will provide first hand information on culture at large, reflecting the diversity and specificity of the local histories of art in each region.

Coinciding with the Triennial, a second exhibition—Toward the Source (February 1–April 16, 2017)—will involve an intergenerational group of five Russian practitioners (Olga Chernysheva, Vyacheslav Kuritsyn, Vladimir Logutov, Andrei Monastyrsky, and Kirill Savchenkov) who are making new work in response to one aspect of Garage Archive Collection that they find compelling. Also opening at the same time is a new Garage Atrium Commissions (March 10–August 6, 2017) by Irina Korina who will produce a three-floor, towering structure that references the distinctively eclectic urban landscape of Moscow.

Garage Triennial is the latest development in an extensive program that the Museum is undertaking to build stronger infrastructure for contemporary Russian art, ranging from Garage Artist Grant program to the establishment of Garage Archive in 2012. Consisting of materials from the 1950s to the present day, the Archive is the resource from which a number of exhibitions, conferences, and publishing projects make the complex history of contemporary Russian art—what historically has been known as unofficial or underground art—more widely understood.

Garage Travel Grants for International Curators are intended for people who would like to learn more about Russian contemporary art. Open to curators from anywhere in the world, of all ages, the grant covers return airfare and accommodation for four days in Moscow during the Triennial.

Grants are available for curators to visit Moscow at any time from March 9 to May 14, 2017, although attending during the opening days will increase the opportunity to meet artists from across the country.

Successful applicants who choose to travel within Russia at their own expense after the initial four-day research period paid by Garage will receive administrative support in setting up meetings and travel arrangements.