Opening of Hermitage’s Moscow branch delayed until 2024

The opening of the State Hermitage Museum’s Moscow branch has been pushed back to 2024, city architects have announced.

The St Petersburg-based institution had slated to open the new art space, designed by Asymptote Architecture’s Hani Rashid, next year.

The new gallery will be the centrepiece of the capital’s Zilart quarter, a newly-renovated cultural centre based in Moscow’s former car factory ZIL— a 1960s factory complex occupying 2 million square metres in the south of the city.

The Russian development company behind the project, the LSR Group, said that the delay was part of a decision to build the structures surrounding the museum first, saving the gallery’s transparent facade from any “unnecessary exposure” while contractors prioritised the area’s extensive residential developments.

Moscow’s chief architect, Sergey Kuznetsov, said that lighting designers had heavily influenced the latest plans for the museum and that special galleries on the building’s first and second floors would be visible from the street outside.

Plans for the remaining galleries would see 19th- and early 20th-century art hosted on the third floor, contemporary and post-war art on the fourth, and experimental art from the 1970s onwards on the fifth. A rooftop restaurant will also feature, as well as a sculpture and performance space.