Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture

This is a new art exhibition space run (“established”) by Dasha Zhukova, model and girlfriend of ueber-oligarch Roman Abramovich.

The building itself is a gem, so it’s just as well that it’s so well hidden. It doesn’t have a number on Google Map and judging by the neighbouring buildings, it shouldn’t be Number 19A (I identified it by the shape it has on the map on Garage’s own website). The walk from Novoslobodskaya metro station takes about 20 minutes.

On the ground, the structure looks so pretty it’s hard to believe that this was designed and served for decades as a bus garage. The creators are preeminent constructivists (think Le Corbusier) Konstantin Melnikov and Vladimir Shukhov.

Inside, there’s a cafe just like in the best Western museums and a bookshop mostly selling books about art and design in English (there aren’t many of these published in Russian anyway). Currently, there are two exhibitions running - one showcasing the collection of French billionaire Francois Pinot, the other, called Fetish and associated with David Lynch, was closed when I visited “for technical reasons” (so I was told) - so I may never get to see the collection of sexy shoes on display. There’s no photography beyond the entrance hall.

While the prices in the cafe and bookshop are, typically for Moscow, at least equal to those in Western cities and possibly higher, the price of tickets is fairly modest - at 100 roubles it’s even less than most other museums in Moscow.