Competition for articles on contemporary art

Since 2012, Garage’s Research department has been carrying out an extensive program of support for researchers in the field of contemporary art. Within this program, the Museum is launching a competition for Russian authors who are invited to write Wikipedia articles about diverse phenomena related to contemporary art.

Garage currently owns the largest archive collection of documents and materials embracing the history of non-official Soviet and contemporary Russian art from the 1950s to today. The Museum’s collection is annually supplemented with new records, while its researchers provide scientific descriptions of the funds, and all entries are being digitalized and added to an electronic catalogue. Along with information about the funds, the archive’s online database contains a chronology of exhibitions and events, as well as biographies of artists, curators, and other figures involved in local art processes. In 2016, Garage launched Russian Art Archives Network—a unified database comprising several large archives of Russian art located in different cities in Russia and abroad. The main goal of RAAN is to provide an academic platform for professional work and make some key resources from various archival collections available to specialists.

The archive’s materials have been used as the source of multiple publications released by Garage and its partner institutions internationally, including catalogues of the exhibitions Reconstruction and Russian Performance: A Cartography of its History, books Exhibit Russia and Access Moscow, etc. Since 2016, Garage has also worked on the development of the Russian segment of Wikipedia, having written and edited dozens of articles dedicated to Russian and foreign artists.

Due to the growing interest in the study of Russian contemporary art, Garage, in collaboration with the non-profit partner organization Wikipedia RU (the official representative of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects on the territory of Russia), invites authors writing in Russian language to fill in the lacunae that currently exist in this free encyclopedia. Upon registering as Wikipedia users, competition participants will be able to submit original texts or edit the already existent materials. The quality of these texts and edits will be evaluated by a jury panel featuring Wikimedia RU NP representatives alongside Garage researchers.

Competition terms and conditions

Garage will accept articles written by Russian citizens on subjects that may vary from museums, art galleries, events and artworks to movements and notable personalities (artists, curators, gallery runners, etc.) of contemporary art. The prize fund for the competition is 150,000 rubles. The top five winners will receive money prizes ranging from 10,000 to 50,000 rubles. The next five finalists (6–10 positions) will be awarded Garage membership cards providing a free priority access to the Museum for one year, a 10% discount at Garage Bookshop, and a 15% discount at Garage Café, as well as books released within Garage’s joint publishing program with Ad Marginem. Participants that will take the 11th to 20th places will receive books released within Garage’s joint publishing program with Ad Marginem.

Applications are accepted until September 31, 2019

To register and learn more about the competition, please follow the link.