If you have time to visit only one of Moscow’s outstanding museums, make it the Museum of Russian Impressionism. Its permanent collection showcases significant works by prominent artists and offers a coherent narrative of Russian art from the late 19th century onward. Highlights include Nikolai Dubovskoy’s “At Lake Maggiore” (1895), Nikolai Clodt’s “The Overgrown Pond” (1910), Kim Britov’s “Winter in the Urals” (1972), Vyacheslav Fyodorov’s “Birches” (1963) and Boris Gladchenko’s “A Park in Early Autumn” (1970).
Housed in a former Bolshevik chocolate factory on Leningradskiy—originally run by a French confectioner—the museum grew from the private collection of founder Boris Mints. Works are displayed chronologically, beginning with early pieces such as Konstantin Korovin’s “The Park” from the 1880s. Many paintings now on view were dispersed into private collections abroad and have been returned to Russia in recent years, enriching the national cultural landscape.
Book Cover © Repeater Books
Recommended reading for your flight: The Adventures of Owen Hatherley in the Post-Soviet Space (Repeater, 2018) by Owen Hatherley. Hatherley writes on architecture, aesthetics and politics for outlets such as the Architectural Review and The Guardian. In this book he travels from the Baltic Sea through Belarus, Ukraine, the Urals and Central Asia, observing traces of past revolutions and examining what Communism means today for people living in the wake of that history.