In 2018, Garage acquired the archive of Alexey Shchusev, chief architect of the First All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Industries Exhibition, which opened in 1923.
The collection comprises plans, drawings, sketches, and documents relating to the creation of one of Soviet Union’s most ambitious exhibition projects of the early 1920s.
The tour offers a rare opportunity to see materials from the collection firsthand and learn how the idea for this large-scale showcase of agricultural achievements took shape. Participants will be able to browse printed materials and see original plans of pavilions designed by prominent architects Fyodor Shekhtel, and Konstantin Melnikov and sketches for murals by avant-garde artist Alexandra Exter. They will also learn about the exhibition’s only surviving pavilion, Machines and Tools (known as The Hexagon since 1935), and trace the continuous history of the site, from the first structures built on the territory of what would become Gorky Park to the launch of Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.
The tour was developed by Garage guide Yulia Delyusto in collaboration with Anna Dikovich, curator of the Alexey Shchusev archive.