The Museum of the Avant-garde at Shabolovka

Avant-garde Center on Shabolovka
2017

The Museum of the Avant-garde, located at the Avant-garde Center, was opened in 2017. It presents both the architecture of Moscow in the 1920s–1930s (constructivism and rationalism, social and architectural experiments illustrated through buildings in the district, and everyday life in a Soviet city of that era) and the local history of the Shabolovka neighborhood, told through the personal memories of its residents. The museum functions as a work in progress, continually expanding its collection. It also serves as a platform for discussions, public meetings, and round tables dedicated to the future of the district and the preservation of its tangible and intangible heritage.

Exhibitions held by the Avant-garde Center, such as Topography of Happiness and Shabolovka: A Model for a New Life, Scale 1:1, along with materials, documents, testimonies, and personal belongings collected from residents, allow the museum to explore the realities of the Soviet utopia and its transformation across the 20th century through lived experience.

The museum’s collection includes over 200 objects: archaeological finds, documents, books, photographs, interviews, architectural models and drawings, mostly gathered from private collections and residents of Shabolovka.

After the revolution, Shabolovka was developed as a model experimental district for the new Soviet Moscow. It was featured in guidebooks and articles, and many architectural innovations were debuted here:

• The Shukhov Radio Tower (1918−1922, engineer Vladimir Shukhov), the first structure built under Soviet power
• The first communal house in the city (1926−1929, architects G. Wolfenzon, S. Aizikovich, and others)
• The first student conveyor-dormitory, Dom-Kommunа (1929−1930, architect Ivan Nikolaev)
• The Khavsko-Shabolovsky housing complex (1927−1930, architect Nikolai Travin), the only realized urban planning project by the rationalist group ASNOVA
• The first Moscow crematorium (1927, architect D. Osipov)

Within a one-kilometer radius of the Shukhov Tower, there are over 70 buildings from the 1920s–1930s, more than 20 of which are officially listed as cultural heritage sites. For this reason, Shabolovka offers a uniquely concentrated setting for a museum dedicated to avant-garde architecture.

Curator and Exhibition Architecture
Aleksandra Selivanova

Research Group
Ilya Malkov
Tatyana Zaitseva
Daria Sorokina
Natalia Melikova
Yana Safronova
Elena Perfilova
Anton Ketov
Daria Zueva
Evgenia Khaet
Valentina Khaltanova
Ekaterina Telegina

Graphic Design
Irina Goryacheva