Designing the City. A History of Urban Festivities in Moscow

Since antiquity, urban celebrations have served as moments when cities dramatically transform—when architects step aside, and artists and directors take over the streets. In these fleeting moments, the city becomes a total theater, with scenery erected across squares and avenues, and residents themselves cast as actors within the scenography of celebration. These urban metamorphoses offer precise reflections of their time—mirroring the rhetoric of power, cultural codes, and the visual language of the era.

In the 20th century, the city became a symbolic space, transmitting a place’s core ideas: its historical foundation (the past), its current agenda (the present), and its ideal vision (the future). The city’s concept of the past is embodied in monuments and attitudes toward architectural heritage. The present is most vividly expressed through temporary, small-scale architectural forms, while major architecture inevitably lags behind. As for visions of the future, they are often debated behind closed doors—among professionals, architects, and bureaucrats. But in popular culture, it is film, advertising, and temporary street installations that present the "city of tomorrow"—through ephemeral but memorable and emotionally charged imagery.

During the modernist era, festive decoration became the primary language for envisioning utopian cities. In the USSR, the legacy of the French Revolution’s public celebrations was reimagined and elevated into monumental, synthetic performances, created by directors, choreographers, artists, sculptors, and architects, who collectively designed massive installations of agitational scenography.

Moscow has a unique history of urban celebrations. Its festivals have always reached ecstatic, theatrical intensity, fusing grandiose pathos with elements of low-brow, carnivalesque culture—whether in coronations and public festivities, revolutionary parades, the athletic demonstrations of the 1930s–1940s, the World Festival of Youth and Students, or the Olympic Games. This density of meaning, the ambiguous imagery, the responsibility of precisely transmitting official ideology, the expectations of a multi-million-strong audience, and fear mingled with awe—all of this can be seen in the photographs, drawings, newsreels, and design objects from the Museum of Moscow’s collection presented in the exhibition.

Specially restored for the exhibition were large-scale scenography projects by the Stenberg brothers, created for the Red Square from the 1920s to the 1950s, along with other rare historical materials. The display also included documents and albums dedicated to the architecture of the pavilions at Khodynka Field for the coronation of Nicholas II. Visitors could also explore materials from the personal archive of Mikhail Ladur — one of the most prominent stage designers and directors of public spectacles in Moscow from the 1930s to the 1970s.

The second part of the exhibition focused on contemporary artistic reflections and new urban utopias, with newly commissioned projects by artists Irina Korina, Dmitry Bulnygin, Anastasia Ryabova, Varvara Gevorgizova, Veronika Zlobina, Anna Krivtsova, Misha MOST, Anna Kurbatova, Alia Sadretdinova, and others. Today, city decoration rarely involves artists; instead, it tends to create a generic "wrapper", often mimicking the templates of European design festivals. This project invited viewers to imagine what our cities might look like if holidays and public events were designed by artists — and to reflect on what currently forms the visual landscape of everyday urban life.

Curators
Aleksandra Selivanova
Yulia Grachikova

Architectural Concept
Aleksandra Selivanova

Design
Anna Skrzhinskaya

Photography 
Museum of Moscow