There are strange encounters...

Ausstellung 9 November 2021 − 6 Februar 2022
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts presents a large-scale exhibition project by renowned French curator Jean-Hubert Martin "There are strange encounters...".

The exhibition, which includes more than four hundred works of art and natural science collections, occupies the main exhibition axis of the Museum's Main Building and seven halls on the second floor. Visitors are greeted not only with well-known museum pieces, but also with those parts of the collection, which are usually hidden in the vaults, and with the works of old masters and modern artists from more than 50 domestic and foreign museum and private collections.

The exhibition consists of 13 sections, each of which has its own subject connected to the refutation of myths in the history of art. The exhibition appeals to the viewer's eye, imagination and interpretations to become a game for all the senses and a space of discovery. Martin shows the Pushkin Collection from a new perspective, supplementing it with exhibits from other Russian and foreign collections, grouping it into thematic sections where unexpected analogies emerge between works from different eras and authors. All exhibits are displayed without signatures. "My task is to help viewers focus on what they see in front of them without being distracted by signatures. After all, when there is a label, it's hard to resist looking at it. I do that myself. But in the case of this exhibition, we aim to encourage visitors to find visual parallels on their own so that the works build up a coherent narrative, like pictures in a comic book that you 'read' in a certain order", Jean-Hubert Martin.

Prepared according to the materials of the official website Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.