Joseph Backstein Collection

Joseph Backstein (1945–2024) was a curator, art historian and critic and a key figure of the Russian contemporary art scene over the past four decades.

The display of selected works from his archive—from a total of around 200—marks Backstein’s 80th birthday and accompanies the video project The Backstein Function², which is currently on view on the first floor at Garage.

In the context of the Museum’s work on shaping a collection of Russian contemporary art, the Backstein archive is unique, as it comprises gifts from artists such as Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina, Vadim Zakharov, Konstantin Zvezdochotov, Elena Kovylina, Oleg Kulik, Andrei Monastyrsky, Irina Nakhova, and Pavel Pepperstein. Many of them also appear in The Backstein Function²—in what film critics would call cameo roles—playing themselves: friends, colleagues, and students of the Institute of Contemporary Art (Moscow), which today bears Joseph Backstein’s name.

The deeply personal nature of this collection expands the notion of what constitutes a work of art: within the museum context, even a greeting card made by Makarevich and Elagina for Backstein’s birthday becomes one. Some works were identified through dedications on the reverse. Another, more «professional, » line of acquisitions consists of works given by artists as a gesture of gratitude—for example, for curating an exhibition—such as one of Andrei Monastyrski’s twelve «three-layer» collages from the project Particular Histories (1990, with Conrad Atkinson), originally shown at the exhibition space on Peresvetov Lane in Moscow’s Proletarsky District. We can be sure that each of the works on display here has a similarly special history.