The Art Newspaper Russia’s fourth prize-giving ceremony, on 17 March, was held (as in previous years) in the vast Manege next to the Kremlin. It was an artistic spectacle in itself, as well as a discriminating sample of Russia’s art life in 2015. Inna Bazhenova, the owner of The Art Newspaper group, again employed the film director Alexey Agranovich and the pioneer of Russian video art, Kirill Preobrazhensky, to produce it. Aliens, dressed in fluorescent Avant-Garde costumes by the engineer-artist Roman Ermakov, excitedly chattered about this thing called art, while each prize was followed by a themed turn: saucy, dancing air-stewardesses giving safety instructions for visiting a museum (prize for the best museum—Dasha Zhukova’s Garage) or ravishing early church music (best restoration—a 12th-century icon, the Bogolubskaya Mother of God). The winner in the best publication category was the Sketches of Visuality series, edited by Galina Elshevskaya (New Literary Observer publishing house, Moscow). The best exhibition was the hugely popular 150th anniversary show at Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery of the painter Valentin Serov, while the prize for personal contribution went to Stella Kesaeva, who is the commissioner for, and backer of, the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
