Garage Archive Lecture Cycle in collaboration with New Holland in Saint Petersburg The History of the Leningrad Underground

This public program of lectures and discussions has been organized by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in collaboration with Lecture Hall on New Holland to acquaint its audience with the history of “Unofficial” art in Leningrad and St Petersburg in the first half of the 1990s, as well as offering a chance to meet some of the participants of the cultural events of the era.

Each lecture is dedicated to a different period or phenomenon in the creative life of the city, ranging from the Unofficial art of the 1970s (nicknamed “Gaza-Nevskaya” culture) to the artistic legacy of the New Artists, including composer Sergey Kuryokhin. One lecture will explore unofficial music and literature—spheres closely connected to visual art, mutually nourishing and enriching one another. The concluding lecture will survey the most significant exhibitions of Leningrad art in the era of perestroika up through the early 1990s.

The lectures will be accompanied by a presentation of visual artifacts, ranging from documents and books, to photographs and video footage. Participants will include some of the leading specialists in the field of contemporary art: Gleb Ershov, an associate professor in Interdisciplinary Research and Practice in the Arts, in the Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the St Petersburg State University; Stanislav Savitsky, a PhD candidate in Art History and associate professor in Interdisciplinary Research and Practice in the Arts, in the Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the St Petersburg State University; Dmitry Pilikin, a curator, art critic and deputy director of the Diaghilev Museum of Modern Art in charge of the exhibitions and collection of the St Petersburg State University; Ekaterina Andreeva, an art critic, curator, art historian and specialist in Russian and Western Art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a PhD candidate in Art History and PhD in Philosophy, and Senior Researcher in the Department of New Tendencies at the State Russian Museum; and Sergey Chubraev, an art critic and specialist in the creative work of Sergey Kuryokhin, who is the collector and creator of a significant archive dedicated to the memory of the pioneering musician. The introductory lecture will be delivered by the curator of the Garage Museum Archive, Sasha Obukhova.

The History of the Leningrad Underground is a continuation of the public program by Garage Archive, the world’s largest collection of materials on Russian contemporary art from the end of the 1950s through the present. The Archive offers a platform for Russian and international scholars and researchers to complete projects like conferences, exhibitions, seminars, and publications, expanding and disseminating the knowledge base around Russian contemporary art.

Curators: Sasha Obukhova, curator of the Archive of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Maria Udovydchenko, the Archive of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

LECTURE HALL ON NEW HOLLAND

On April 1, the Pavilion on New Holland Island will launch the second season of its regular educational programming, “Lecture Hall.” For 2018, the lectures will be organized under eight distinct themes: the Sunday film club hosted by Seance Magazine; lectures on political and social sciences, organized by the European University; a series exploring film theory; a survey of art in Leningrad, presented in collaboration with Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; the architecture-themed series, Genius Loci, curated by the magazine Project Baltia; lectures on the social sciences from the Higher School of Economics; Out Loud, a program dedicated to the study of sound; and lectures on graphic design, headed up by the design department of New Holland.

“Lecture Hall” was created as a means of bringing high quality educational initiatives to the wider audience of visitors to New Holland. The topics for these lectures have been specially selected to appeal to a broad range of ages and demographics. The lectures in this particular season will run on the island until October. Admission to the lectures is free of charge. For more information, including a schedule, please refer to the website, www.newhollandsp.ru.