Registration
Registration

Book presentation: Zinaida Bonami. Herwarth Walden, Curator of the New Art. Life and Fate

Date

Schedule

19:00–21:00

Place

Communal Block, Narkomfin Building

DESCRIPTION

Published in the GARAGE.txt series in October 2022, Zinaida Bonami’s book explores the life of Herwarth Walden (1879–1941), a leading figure of the early-twentieth-century European avant-garde, founder of the international expressionist movement, publisher of the popular German magazine Der Sturm, and owner of the eponymous art gallery in Berlin.

The first biography of Walden by a Russian author presents his extensive practice aimed at establishing the new art as an early experience of curating.

The presentation features author Zinaida Bonami in conversation with gallery owner Anastasia Shavlokhova and art historian Sergey Khachaturov. They will discuss Walden’s curatorial, publishing, and exhibition activities and the figure of the curator in twentieth-century and present-day cultural history. Herwarth Walden was an implacable fighter for his own ethical and aesthetic principles. In defending the avant-garde movements, he did not try to be objective and politically correct. Does the curator need such an obsessive attitude today, or does it blind them and hinder a complex understanding of the process? Walden had a universal education in all areas of art, including music, theater, and literature, while also being well versed in the economics of the art business. In this regard, an important dilemma arises, one which Walden had to solve in the past and which many independent curators face today: is the person who creates exhibitions and promotes vanguard art primarily a manager and producer or a creator and director?

PARTICIPANTS

Zinaida Bonami is a museum expert and has curated numerous art and literary exhibitions. From 2001 to 2015, she was Deputy Director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Her research focuses on cultural and museum studies. She is the author of the books How to Read and Understand a Museum. The Philosophy of the Museum (2018) and How to Read and Understand an Exhibition. The Anatomy of the Exhibition (2021) and co-author of the monograph The Politics of Affect. The Museum as a Space of Public History (2019). She lives and works in Moscow.

Sergey Khachaturov is an art historian and curator. He is a Candidate of Art History, Associate Professor of the Department of the History of Russian Art of the Faculty of History of Lomonosov Moscow State University, and senior research fellow at the State Institute of Art Studies. He is the author of several books (including Gothic Taste in Eighteenth-Century Russian Art Culture, The Art of the Book in Russia. Masters of the Left-Wing Trends of the 1910s–1930s, Ulenspiegel. (A Trilogy of Performances), and Romanticism Outside Romanticism) and the curator of multiple exhibitions at institutions including Multimedia Art Museum Moscow, Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art (Moscow), Fabrika Center for Creative Industries (Moscow), Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve (Moscow), Moscow Museum of Modern Art. He is a regular contributor to the magazines Dialog Iskusstv, Iskusstvo, and Iskusstvoznanie, the online platform arterritory.com (Latvia), and others. He lives and works in Moscow.

Anastasia Shavlokhova is the founder of szena gallery (Moscow) and the co-founder of the Nepokorennye Open Studio (St. Petersburg, 2007–2011). From 2019 to 2021 she was director of the cultural department of the Embassy of Qatar in the Russian Federation. She is a recipient of the Caryatid Prize and a German Chancellor Fellowship. She lives and works in Moscow.

HOW TO TAKE PART

Free admission with advance registration.

REGISTRATION

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