My family told me that my job was to show them the pretty parts of Moscow. It's understandable that, after only seeing airports, train stations, and ugly peripheral neighborhoods, one would think that Moscow is just a big, crowded mess of a city. But there are pretty places in Moscow--one just has to know where to find them.
On our second day, we hit Moscow's museums hard. We started off by visiting the impressionism collection at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. We also visited a great exhibition of early 20th-century American magazine art, which was another one of those surreal experiences--we were looking at iconic pieces of Americana in Moscow. For all the hype that the Hermitage gets, we all agreed that the Pushkin is a better museum: The art is displayed better, and there is air conditioning.
After the Pushkin, we went to Victory Park and visited the Great Patriotic War Museum. For those who don't know, WWII is known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia, and it is a powerful subject. The Soviet Union lost at least 23 million people in the war. The museum itself is very grandiose and features a lot of Soviet symbology, which of course is a necessary part of the war's commemoration (it was the Soviet Union fighting, after all), but this symbology and the overall aggressive, assertive tone of the exhibits can be a bit estranging. We Americans, of course, are used to a different style of commemoration and even a slightly different interpretation of the history of the war. The museum is very powerful, though, and definitely gives a sense of the horrible totality of the war.
Our last museum for the day was the Mayakovsky Museum. This was one of the strangest museums I have ever visited, and perhaps it is a fitting museum to the man behind so much new-age, revolutionary design in the earliest days of the Soviet Union. The museum featured absolutely no interpretation of the work, which was displayed helter-skelter throughout the whole multi-floored building. A lot of Russian museums are like this--they are very inaccessible without a guide who will expound in a didactic tone on every tiny detail of the place; the lone museum goer will find himself totally lost amid a sea of uninterpreted and obscure exhibits. Anyway, here are some pictures of our Moscow museum day:
On our second day, we hit Moscow's museums hard. We started off by visiting the impressionism collection at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. We also visited a great exhibition of early 20th-century American magazine art, which was another one of those surreal experiences--we were looking at iconic pieces of Americana in Moscow. For all the hype that the Hermitage gets, we all agreed that the Pushkin is a better museum: The art is displayed better, and there is air conditioning.
After the Pushkin, we went to Victory Park and visited the Great Patriotic War Museum. For those who don't know, WWII is known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia, and it is a powerful subject. The Soviet Union lost at least 23 million people in the war. The museum itself is very grandiose and features a lot of Soviet symbology, which of course is a necessary part of the war's commemoration (it was the Soviet Union fighting, after all), but this symbology and the overall aggressive, assertive tone of the exhibits can be a bit estranging. We Americans, of course, are used to a different style of commemoration and even a slightly different interpretation of the history of the war. The museum is very powerful, though, and definitely gives a sense of the horrible totality of the war.
Our last museum for the day was the Mayakovsky Museum. This was one of the strangest museums I have ever visited, and perhaps it is a fitting museum to the man behind so much new-age, revolutionary design in the earliest days of the Soviet Union. The museum featured absolutely no interpretation of the work, which was displayed helter-skelter throughout the whole multi-floored building. A lot of Russian museums are like this--they are very inaccessible without a guide who will expound in a didactic tone on every tiny detail of the place; the lone museum goer will find himself totally lost amid a sea of uninterpreted and obscure exhibits. Anyway, here are some pictures of our Moscow museum day:
Cathedral of Christ the Savior
American magazine covers in Mosow
In the Mayakovsky Museum
The exterior of the Pushkin
Map of the Moscow Metro
Victory Park
View of some of Moscow's most expensive real estate
Diorama of the siege of Leningrad
On the ceiling of the museum's main room
In the main room
Some of the exhibits
The Bolshoi Theater
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