Olga Uskova to Open Museum for 1950s-60s Russian Avant-Garde

Russian entrepreneur and collector Olga Uskova (born 1964, Moscow) has established a foundation with $4.5 million to promote the lesser-known Russian avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s abroad, and plans to open a dedicated museum in Moscow by the end of 2017. The museum will be housed in a former factory designed between 1927 and 1929 by constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov, purchased by the foundation. Uskova's initiative began in 2012 when she acquired the archive of collector and art historian Samvel Oganesyan, which included the largest collection of Russian art from the 1950s and 1960s. In 2013, she founded the Russian Abstract Art Foundation in Moscow, which organizes exhibitions on the Second Avant-Garde both in Russia and internationally. The collection was first shown in 2014 at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, and later at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in October 2016. A September exhibition in Atlanta will juxtapose Russian artists from the 1950s with their American contemporaries. The foundation is also planning a major exhibition in China in 2018. The Second Avant-Garde emerged during the brief cultural liberalization under Khrushchev, amid Cold War tensions and Stalinist repression. Key artists include Lucian Gribkov, Vladislav Zubarev, Vera Preobrazhenskaya, and Tamara Ter-Ghevondyan, whose works were produced clandestinely and smuggled to the West. Uskova's efforts aim to recover and promote this suppressed artistic heritage.