Contemporary Art in the Traditional Museum Festival to open this weekend in St Petersburg

The 13th Contemporary Art in the Traditional Museum Festival will open this weekend, bringing exhibitions by contemporary Russian, British and German artists to St Petersburg museums.

Established in 2000, the festival turns traditional museum spaces into contemporary art venues. This year the festival will take place across a host of museums on Vasilyevsky Island and will address the theme “Hyperlocal: Great Discoveries”. The curator is Alisa Prudnikova, director of the Ural Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts and founder of the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art.

For the first time the event will include an exhibition bringing together all the various elements of the festival: replicas of artworks, research carried out by the students of St Petersburg universities in the participating museums, an installation by Yekaterinburg artist Vladimir Seleznev and a photo-project by students of the Rochenko Moscow School of Photography under the leadership of Vladislav Efimov. This special exhibition will be held at the festival’s central site, the ARTMUZA Art Centre.

Organised by the St Petersburg PRO ARTE Foundation and the North-Western Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, the festival is supported by the St Petersburg Committee on Culture, the Russian Ministry of Culture and the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation.

The 13th Contemporary Art in the Traditional Museum Festival will take place from 26 September to 25 October 2015. Entry to the museums will be free on the opening weekend (26-27 September) and on Saturday 26 September free bus shuttles will be operating between the festival museums.