The current architectural competition is an expected episode in the history of the Moscow Museum of Fine Arts. When Norman Foster in 2013 abandoned further work on the project for the reconstruction of the Pushkin Museum, the epic that had lasted since 2007 ended: then the British architect was invited to create the Museum Town on Volkhonka - more precisely, to give it a clear and coherent form. His departure apparently allowed the management of the museum to reconsider the goals and objectives of the upcoming renovation with the help of the French consulting bureau Avesta Group Consultancy.
Like Foster's bureau, Avesta has worked with the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts since 2007; the portfolio of French specialists headed by Paul Alezra includes a variety of museums - from the London Tate Gallery to the Venetian "exhibition halls" of Francois Pino, Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana. Now they have presented a new concept for the development of the museum, which, unlike the previous version, takes into account the complex historical context and the need to give the complex an open, public character.
The buildings on Volkhonka are extremely heterogeneous in age and size; even the presence or absence of a basement in them is very important, since it is planned to connect the buildings with underground corridors. This quality of the source material is combined with the amazing variety of the planned program: this is a design zone designed for young people (the area opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Savior), and the New Museum (Gallery of old masters in the former Vyazemsky-Dolgoruky estate, a lawn in front of it, where you can even put summer pavilions, the new main entrance of the museum from the facade along Maly Znamensky Lane), the Educational Center around the Museyon, etc.
An architectural competition is held on the basis of this concept; At a press conference dedicated to its launch in the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Architecture, the director of the Pushkin Museum Marina Loshak called it a difficult new step on the path of the museum's development, but a step as inevitable as our future is inevitable. The architects invited to participate in the closed competition - Project Meganom, Sergey Skuratov architects and TPO “Reserve” - will have to act within the framework of the updated Avesta concept, taking into account the main values of the customer. Among these values, the key one is the maximum openness of the Museum Quarter: all fences and fences, with the exception of historical ones, must be removed, and the lanes inside it must be turned into pedestrian zones. Visitors will be able to move freely through this territory, and its green parts, so valuable for the center of the metropolis, will play a special role. In winter, this movement will take place more actively along the underground passages, which will help to distribute human flows and, if possible, get rid of the queues that have long become a kind of attraction of Volkhonka.
New construction will be concentrated in the eastern part of the Museum Town, where buildings with storage facilities (9000 m2), restoration workshops (3000 m2) and exhibition halls (5000 m2) will appear. Marina Loshak plans to arrange exhibition spaces of various sizes and specializations in all the buildings of the Pushkin Museum, and, in accordance with current museum practice, both storage and even workshops will be more or less accessible for inspection. It is also planned to create a public library covering the theme of book illustration and the artist's book genre. In the museum quarter, cinemas, cafes and museum shops will appear, which will close later than the museum itself, so that the quarter does not die out every evening, but remains a center of cultural and social activity until late.
In the western part of the complex, next to a gas station of the 1930s (its transfer to a new location is a done deal, chief architect of the capital Sergei Kuznetsov said at a press conference), it is planned to arrange a shop and a design training center, as well as a summer lobby for the Pushkin Museum. In the future, it is possible that an audience for 500-600 seats will appear there, for the creation of which both Marina Loshak and the President of the Pushkin Museum Irina Antonova are advocating.
Returning to the architectural competition, Loshak, in an interview with reporters, stressed that she sees no problem in the fact that for all three participants this is the first museum project: everything happens for the first time, but these architects are certainly talented and experienced, and they also value the Pushkin Museum. It was supported by the adviser to the President of the Russian Federation for culture Vladimir Tolstoy, who expressed satisfaction with the fact that the opportunity to show themselves was given to Russian architects, while foreigners often won key national competitions in the past. We will be able to find out what fruits this initiative will bring on June 24, 2014: then the winner of the competition for the architectural concept of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts will be announced.
