Muzeon. 30 years

A new exhibition dedicated to the 30th anniversary of one of the youngest parks in the capital has opened in the courtyard of the Museum of Moscow. Archival photographs and documents will show and tell the history of Muzeon, which is directly related to the history of the country. The exhibition was made by the Museum of Moscow together with Gorky Park with the participation of the State Museum of Architecture named after A.V. Shchusev.

The decision to organize an art park with two exhibition halls on the territory from Yakimanskaya embankment to the Crimean bridge was made in 1956. The project was entrusted to the staff of the school-workshop of academician of architecture Ivan Zholtovsky - Yuri Sheverdyaev, Nikolai Sukoyan and others. In 1962, the Council of Ministers decided to build instead of two one building 300 meters long with a laconic facade and contrasting bas-reliefs. But this project also underwent changes: at the end of construction, the facade was lined with white marble and left smooth.

A park was designed around the exhibition building, which was supposed to continue the green axis of the Park of Culture. But due to funding problems, the construction of the complex was delayed. In 1979, a part of the building, which belonged to the Union of Artists of the USSR, was put into operation - it was called the Central House of Artists. In 1983, new halls of the State Art Gallery of the USSR were opened, which in 1986 merged with the Tretyakov Gallery. At the same time, all residential areas around were finally demolished, and a park with a rectangular grid of paths and lanterns was built. At that moment there were no sculptures there.

After the failure of the August coup in 1991, the demonstrators who gathered at the monument to Dzerzhinsky on Lubyanka Square succeeded in removing it from the pedestal. The dismantled sculpture was brought to the park on Krymsky Val. The same fate befell other Soviet monuments. On January 24, 1992, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov signed a decree on the creation of an open-air sculpture museum. At the initiative of the first general director of the park, Mikhail Pukemo, it was named "Museon", which means "temple of the Muses" in ancient Greek. Today, his collection includes not only Soviet monuments, but also works by contemporary sculptors.

By the beginning of the 2000s, thanks to the overgrown trees, the Muzeon space began to gradually turn into a park, and then, together with Sparrow Hills and the Neskuchny Garden, became part of the Park of Culture. The turning point for this place was 2013, when the Moscow authorities carried out the reconstruction of the Krymskaya embankment and Muzeon according to the project of the architectural bureaus Wowhaus and Ass Architects.