Garage Museum of Contemporary Art by OMA

The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art has just opened  in Moscow. Located in Gorky park, the building has been designed by international firm OMA led by architect Rem Koolhaas. With a range of exhibitions, performances, screenings, and events  will introduce visitors to the broad range of Garage Programs and showcase the innovative new Museum spaces.

A special-edition publication—Garage Gazette—will be produced to provide the context for all activities. The 5,400 square-meter building will feature a state of the art façade consisting of a translucent double-layer of polycarbonate that is elevated two meters from the ground to visually reconnect the Museum’s interior to the park.

The structure will be immediately recognizable worldwide by its unique silhouette, produced by two 11-meter wide vertically sliding panels that rise seven meters above a rooftop terrace. The new building will provide Garage with inventive opportunities for programming through five exhibition galleries, Auditorium, Resource Room, and education spaces, including Kid’s Room, as well as a Bookshop and Café.

Five major international projects will include interactive exhibitions by Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929, Matsumoto, Japan) and Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. 1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) with Julius Koller (b. 1939, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia); as well as the inaugural Garage Atrium Commission by Erik Bulatov (b. 1933, Sverdlorsk, USSR); and a site-specific installation by Katharina Grosse (b. 1961, Freiburg, Germany) for Garage Pavilion.

For his debut Russian exhibition, Rirkrit Tiravanija invites audiences to participate in works developed in response to his experiences in the city, from tournaments in collaboration with Ping-Pong Club Moscow (P.P.C.M.), to eating pelmeni (the Russian dumpling) served from site-specific sculptures.

The artist has also paid homage to little-known Czechoslovakian conceptualist Július Koller (1939-2007), who is both an inspiration and creative source for Tiravanija, particularly in his choice of the exhibition title: Tomorrow Is the Question.

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is a place for people, art, and ideas to create history.  Founded in 2008 by Dasha Zhukova, the museum is the first philanthropic institution in Russia to create a comprehensive public mandate for contemporary art and culture. The organization was initially housed in (and received its name from) the renowned Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage in Moscow, designed by the Constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov.

In 2012, Garage relocated to Gorky Park, to a temporary pavilion specifically commissioned from award-winning architect Shigeru Ban. A year later, a purpose-built Education Center was opened next to the Pavilion.

On May 1, 2014, Garage Center for Contemporary Culture changed its name to Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, reflecting the founder’s commitment to providing long-term public access to living artists and art histories. On June 12, 2015 Garage welcomes visitors to its first permanent home.

Designed by Rem Koolhaas and his OMA studio, this is a groundbreaking preservation project that has transformed the famous Vremena Goda (Seasons of the Year) Soviet Modernist restaurant built in 1968 in Gorky Park, into a contemporary museum. Garage is a non-profit project of The IRIS Foundation. Source by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.

Location: Moscow, Russia
Architects: OMA
Lead: Rem Koolhaas
Model and Rendering: © OMA
Year: 2015
Photographs: Yuri Palmin, Egor Slizyak, Denis Sinyakov/ © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Courtesy Garage Museum of Contemporary Art