V&A FACE-LIFT CONTINUES DESPITE ECONOMY; NEW RUSSIAN CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM
Peter Aspden of the Financial Times reports that the Victoria and Albert Museum unveiled plans on Wednesday for the final phase of its $179 million refurbishment, which will transform the display of some of its most precious treasures. The face-lift was launched in 2000 and is due to be completed by the end of next year. Under the museum’s plan, there will be seven new ceramics galleries—the museum owns the largest and greatest collection in the world—and new theater and performance spaces. Mark Jones, the museum’s director, noted that the new galleries will revitalize the museum and that the V&A was fortunate it had already raised the money for the project before tougher economic times caused by the financial crunch set in. “It’s too early to say what the effects [of the crisis] will be here, but in the US, museums have certainly found it more difficult to get corporate sponsors and individual donations,” said Jones.
In other news, the Art Newspaper_ reports that Stella Kesaeva, the Russian contemporary art collector, head of the Moscow-based Stella Art Foundation, and wife to Russian billionaire Igor Kesaev, signed an agreement with the Russian Culture Ministry to open a museum of contemporary art in a Moscow bus garage built in the 1920s by the modernist architect Konstantin Melnikov. The thirty-six-thousand-square-foot garage, located near the Kazan Train Station in the city center, is currently used by a bus company, which must relocate before renovations begin. The museum is tentatively set to open in 2014 and will initially display art from Kesaeva’s collection of about six hundred works, mostly Russian postwar art. The museum will also house Russia’s first contemporary art academy and a concert hall for contemporary music. The announcement comes a month after Dasha Zhukova opened an arts center in another garage built by Melnikov with financial support from her boyfriend, Roman Abramovich. “All this activity is good for Russia’s contemporary art scene,” said Kesaeva.
