Buildings associated with Dasha Zhukova and Roman Abramovich’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow were searched on Friday (26 April) by law enforcement agents—reportedly the Federal Security Service (FSB), which oversees the Kremlin’s most rigid crackdowns.
In a statement on 27 April to the Russian art site Artguide, a Garage spokesperson said: “Yesterday, 26 April, a search was carried out in the office and archives of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. To date, the investigative actions have been completed and the museum continues to operate as usual. The search was related to the case of Pyotr Verzilov.” Verzilov, an artist and activist who last year revealed that he had joined Ukrainian forces to fight against Russia, has been accused of state treason. (Many artists connected to Verzilov were interrogated last month during a series of FSB raids immediately preceding Russia’s presidential elections.)
The searches were conducted a month after the resignation of Roxana Shatunovskaya, the director of New Holland in St Petersburg, a contemporary culture venue also launched by Zhukova and Abramovich. Shatunovskaya’s husband has been arrested and added to the Russian government’s list of “terrorists and extremists” in response to a social media post of his.
There were contradictory reports throughout the day on Friday of events at Garage. Initially, unnamed sources in the interior ministry (MVD) and at the museum denied that any search was taking place, although detailed accounts of law enforcement herding employees and forbidding them from making phone calls began to appear in the media, and on social media sites and channels. Videos were posted in Telegram channels showing black-masked, vested, helmeted and armed law enforcement agents at two museum buildings: an administrative building and the educational centre and archive on the Garage grounds in Gorky Park.
A museum staffer told Mediazona, the human rights news site founded by Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina, that around 15 to 20 people entered the administrative building that houses the museum’s archive to conduct a search, relocating around 30 to 40 employees in the building to another area.
“They took everyone away quite harshly, they did not allow us to take personal belongings, but at the same time they did not twist us, without hitting us, and so on,” the staff member told Mediazona. “But everything was quite tough. And then people in civilian clothes came and didn’t introduce themselves.” The source told Mediazona that the plainclothes officers wanted to speak with the chief of the legal department, who was on vacation at the time, as well as members of the marketing and exhibitions departments.
According to the Sota Telegram channel, law enforcement left Garage’s education center with “at least two boxes”.
RBC, a news outlet with close government ties, reported that according to its source the search had been conducted by the FSB. A representative for Garage told the news site Podyom that the museum’s main building was not searched. Reports that the landmark Constructivist Narkomfin building, which houses a bookstore curated by Garage staff, had also been targeted, were also denied to Podyom. Books and almanacs from two publishing houses were reportedly pulled from the Garage-run stores earlier this month.
Members of the Russian art community domestically and abroad are concerned about the potential threat to the Garage archive, to which many Russian contemporary art figures have donated substantial materials. Garage also began to acquire Soviet underground and contemporary art archives in St Petersburg, which are kept at New Holland. Garage created the Russian Art Archive Network, proposing a partnership with two archives of Soviet nonconformist art, at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in New Jersey and the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen in Germany.
Garage’s main, Soviet-era building, a former park restaurant pavilion, opened in 2015 after a redesign by the architect Rem Koolhas and his firm OMA. Its grand opening was attended by international art world guests, although Russia had already annexed Crimea from Ukraine and fomented war in its eastern regions. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the museum suspended exhibitions. The cafe and shop in the main building continue to function, and film showings are held.