Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, headed by Roman Abramovich’s girlfriend Dasha Zhukova, is leaving its premises at Melnikov’s and Shokhov’s constructivist monument for a better life in Moscow’s Central Gorky Park.
Garage will occupy the buildings constructed in 1923 under the joint project of a prominent Soviet architect of the 20th Century, the ideologist of Stalin’s architecture, Ivan Zholtovsky, and architects Viktor Kokorin and Mikhail Parusnikov.
This building was created for the first All-Union Agricultural Exhibition of 1923. Today the building is in decay. Its restoration requires major investment and will involve the participation of two architects – one Russian, and one from abroad.
According to Kommersant Daily, the director of the art center Anton Belov said he hopes that the restoration will begin in the second half of this year.
Last week, Russian media spread unconfirmed information that the celebrity boyfriend of the art center’s owner, Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich, is interested in investing in the Gorky Park renewal project. Some media said that it may be connected to the recent change of the Gorky Park administration. State Duma deputy Sergey Kapkov was recently appointed head of Moscow’s Central Recreation Park. He is known to be close with Roman Abramovich.