The initial investment income from Garage Endowment Fund will support eight areas of the Museum’s work

The support of donors has made Garage Endowment Fund the third largest museum endowment in Russia, with the annual return on investment in 2020 amounting to 23%. The investment income will be spent on exhibition, inclusive, education, publishing, regional, and archive projects, as well as acquisitions for Garage Library and artist grants.

This fall Garage will show the exhibition Spirit Labor: Duration, Difficulty, and Affect (LINK), which explores the durational dimension expressed through the body of the artist or the act of making and displaying art. Featuring works by over 30 artists from Southeast and Central Asia and Eastern and Western Europe, the project will receive ₽5 million from the Endowment Fund investment income. 

Thanks to a ₽1 million contribution from the Endowment Fund, Garage Archive Collection—the world’s largest archive on the history of Russian contemporary art—will acquire the archive of the project Made in Dance, which contains documents on 1990s club culture in Russia, including materials related to the legendary raves in the 145 Fontanka and Petrovsky Boulevard squats and in the clubs Ermitazh, Tonnel, Ptyuch, Aerodance, Titanik, Jazz Café, Justo, Shambala, Krysha Mira, Simachev Bar, and Rabitsa.

In 2021, Garage will continue to support cultural initiatives from Russian cities outside Moscow that compile and study archives on the history of Russian contemporary art. Supported by Garage Endowment Fund, researchers from PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art will continue their work on archives covering the local art scene in Perm, which will be made available on the RAAN platform. The project will receive ₽1 million from Garage Endowment Fund. 

The Endowment Fund will also support three projects within the Museum’s inclusive program: an update of the app Signing Museums for Kids scheduled for the International Week of Deaf People; an education course for deaf teenagers and children of deaf adults that will introduce them to contemporary culture; and Ilkhom, an education course for teenagers with migration experience that will introduce them to museum jobs. The course was developed by graduates of the program on the basics of working with people with migrant backgrounds and experience of forced migration (2020) and will be taught by them. The three projects will receive ₽1 million from Garage Endowment Fund.

This year Garage Endowment Fund will also allocate ₽1 million for the acquisition of books on Japanese contemporary art and culture for Garage Library. Over 100 publications on Japanese visual art, film, photography, and performance will become available to Garage Library visitors.

With the support of the Endowment Fund, Garage is planning to publish two books by key figures of post-colonial theory, Edward Said (1935–2003) and Dipesh Chakrabarty (b. 1948). The first is a new translation of Said’s first and best-known book, Orientalism, in which he examines the Western academic perspective on the imaginary East, and the second is Chakrabarty’s key work, Provincializing Europe, which explores how modernity appeared and Europe’s role within it. These books are the first in a new postcolonial series that will feature writing by acclaimed theorists, including those studying the Russian historical and contemporary contexts.

At the end of the year, Garage will organize a school for curators called Curating Time, during which Russian performance and dance practitioners will form a group to study questions of spatial organization of exhibitions, combining “live” and exhibition display and the curator’s own physicality (the extent to which the curator should, wants to, and can use their own kinesthetics in the development of the exhibition or event). The result will be a presentation of sketches for performance projects, one of which will be produced in 2023. The project will receive ₽1 million from Garage Endowment Fund.

₽1.7 million will be allocated for grants. In 2021, Garage will offer grants to contemporary artists; researchers who study Russian art (Archive Summer); authors who write on contemporary art and culture in the Russian language (GARAGE.txt); and new technology and media projects (Garage Digital).

Garage Endowment Fund was launched in 2018 as part of the Museum’s program of sustainable development, in order to provide stable funding for Garage projects in future. Donations received by Garage Endowment Fund are not spent but invested, with investment income being used to support the Museum’s development.