Hermitage Gets Green Light for Contemporary Art Satellite Museum in Moscow

ZIL Culture Center, in Moscow. Could this be site of the Hermitage Museum contemporary art satellite?
Photo via: Broke Tourist

St Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum is moving ahead with concrete plans to launch its Moscow satellite, which will focus on contemporary art.

A site for the Moscow branch has now been allocated. The director of the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, signed an agreement with the site’s developers, LSR, on Wednesday, the Art Newspaper reports.

Last December, on the occasion of the Hermitage’s 250th anniversary celebration, the museum announced of the launch of several new Hermitage State Museum satellites throughout Russia (see Hermitage State Museum Satellites To Launch Throughout Russia).

The Hermitage has set eyes on a Stalin-era structure in the Russian capital: the former ZIL car factory, which has been occupied, since 2012, by the ZIL Culture Center.

The center is the first and largest of its kind in Moscow, including galleries, library, and lectures and dance programs. In the few years since its inception, it has become a vibrant creative hub for contemporary art and culture.

In a phone call to the center, a spokesperson told artnet News that ZIL Culture Center has no information regarding their future at the moment.

A new building, designed for the Hermitage by the Canadian-born architect Hani Rashid on the site of the former ZIL car factory, “could be completed by 2018,” according to TAN.

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