Get to know the "Ruined Wing" of the Schusev Architecture Museum, near the Kremlin, in a one-off event on Friday as the museum opens up to photo enthusiasts.
Professional photographer Mikhail Kashin will run a photo workshop in the building, which is one of the most enchanting buildings in Moscow. DJ Andrei Yegorov will provide music, with drinks and food provided by Khitriye Lyudi (Clever Folks), co-owners of Tsurtsum Cafe in Winzavod.
"This is a new type of event. We are trying to attract a new public and do something new," said museum spokeswoman Maria Girba. "Everyone will take a great photo in an incredible space. The Ruined Wing has a wonderful history."
The ruin is just that, remnants of part of an 18th-century estate that was on Ulitsa Vozhdvizhenka, where the museum is now located. Originally built as a service wing for the Talyzin-Ustinov estate, it was used as a stable in the early 19th century and has gone through many lives since then. It was a pension department in the mid-19th century after the estate was passed on to the state treasury chamber. After the Revolution, it was turned into communal apartments before becoming a design institute in the 1960s. It finally ended up in the hands of the Schusev Museum in the 1980s, but it was left to rot until David Sarkisyan, the legendary head of the museum, decided to use its dilapidated state as a plus rather than a minus, hosting exhibitions in the building and renaming it the Ruined Wing.
If you go up the stairs, you can see an art installation devoted to Sarkisyan. His office, which was famous throughout the architecture world for its jumble of wonders, has been painstakingly moved to the Ruined Wing that he created.
The nighttime photo event is part of the museum's idea to work with old buildings and show how they can be used and preserved, Girba said.
The photo event in the Ruined Wing takes place Friday from 8 p.m. to midnight. Tickets cost 350 rubles. Schusev State Museum of Architecture. 5 Ulitsa Vozdvizhenka. Metro Alexandrovsky Sad. 499-691-2109.
