The "Night of Museums" starts on May 17th. What you need to know

The annual action "Night of Museums" will be held on the night of May 17-18 throughout Russia. In addition to museums, art galleries, art spaces and libraries will be open that night. Most places will be free to visit. How this action appeared and how it is taking place is in the Izvestia article.

How the action came about

• For the first time, the "Night of Museums" was held in Germany in 1997. Two years later, the event was organized in France. In Russia, the action was first held in 2002 on the initiative of the Krasnoyarsk Museum Center. Now it is an international event attended by more than 40 countries and over 3,000 cultural complexes.

• There are no general rules for organizing an action. It is usually held on the weekend before the International Museum Day on May 18. The holiday itself was established in 1977 on the initiative of the USSR at the General Conference of the International Council of Museums.

• Many countries organize a "Museum Night" several times a year. During the "Night of Museums", visitors can view the exhibitions using a single city free ticket, which can usually be obtained by registering online. In Russia, you can select an event on the official Museum Nights website and get a ticket after online registration.

• The main purpose of the campaign is to attract people's attention to art. The nighttime and free format has already attracted millions of people, especially young people who prefer to relax at a later time. In addition, the venues try to entertain visitors with both the usual excursions and concerts with games. For one night, museums become a meeting place, as well as a way to break out of the routine. Last year, about 350,000 people came to the rally in Russia.

How will the "Night of Museums" be held in 2025?

• In the Year of Defender of the Fatherland, the main theme of the campaign is "Heroes". On the official Museum Nights page, you can watch live broadcasts of guided tours, lectures, workshops and other events that will take place in Russian museums. The action is organized by the Ministry of Culture of Russia and the portal "Culture.RF"..

• Museum Night will be the only time of the year when cultural institutions in many Russian cities are open late or even into the morning. At the same time, the opening hours will be extended for everyone, but the museums will close their doors at different times. Most sites are open until midnight or two in the morning. The rules of attendance also differ: some events are available for free upon prior online registration, while others will require a small fee.

• The capital will host several hundred events, most of which will be dedicated to the 80th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War. So, the diary of Vladimir Grishin, a 17-year-old resident of Leningrad, will be read in the Historical Museum. In his notes, he shared his memories of the winter of the siege. The Borodino Battle Museum has organized a large-scale exhibition of drawings by frontline artists.

• At the same time, not only excursions are organized at night, but also concerts. For example, the Moscow Rave will be held next to the Museum of Moscow, where an open-air street music concert will take place. A concert is also being organized at the Museum of Cosmonautics, but with the participation of soloists from the Mariinsky and Bolshoi Theaters. Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov will also conduct guided tours and talk about life on the space station. In addition, this night you can play ping-pong at the Multimedia Art Museum (MAMM) or go on a camping expedition at the Kolomenskoye Museum Reserve.

• A rich program at the "Night of Museums" is also expected in St. Petersburg. The open-air Artillery Museum will house military-historical sites of reenactment clubs. They will feature replicas of Red Army weapons. The Planetarium will tell about the heroes who brought victory closer with their research during the Great Patriotic War. Peter Tchaikovsky's romances will be performed in the Anichkov Palace, and Sumerian songs in a jazz arrangement will be performed in the Anna Akhmatova Museum.