The exhibition "High Underground" at the Museum of Moscow will open on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Moscow Metro

On June 6, to mark the 90th anniversary of the Moscow Metro, the Moscow Transport Museum and the Moscow Museum will present the exhibition "High Underground", a large-scale art research project dedicated to art in the Moscow metro. The exhibition explores the subway as an "underground museum" where millions of passengers come into contact with works of art every day.: mosaics, reliefs, sculptures, stained glass windows, and more. The exhibition will include more than 350 objects from more than 25 public and private collections, including the Tretyakov Gallery, the Shchusev Museum of Architecture, the Russian Museum, the Museum of Moscow, as well as family archives of descendants of artists who worked on the design of the metro. Among the authors whose works will be presented at the exhibition are Vera Mukhina, Pavel Korin, Andrey Kuznetsov, Leonid Berlin and other artists and architects who shaped the visual language of metro stations. Special attention is paid to the Moscow Transport Museum's own collection — for the first time, models and multimedia materials created specifically for the future permanent exhibition in Konstantin Melnikov's garage on Novoryazanskaya Street will be presented.

"On behalf of Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, as part of the celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Moscow Metro, we have prepared an extensive program of events: concerts, lectures, special promotions and exhibitions. For the Moscow Transport Museum, the study of the history of the Moscow metro is one of the priority areas of work. The joint project of the Moscow Transport Museum and the Moscow Museum, the exhibition "High Underground", will tell citizens about the metro as the largest collection of art objects and a living cultural space," said Maxim Liksutov, Deputy Mayor of Moscow in the Moscow government, head of the Department of Transport and Road Infrastructure Development of Moscow.

"Today, the metro is the main driving force of the capital, ensuring the life of the entire metropolis. This year, the metro celebrates its 90th anniversary. On this landmark date for the whole city, the Moscow Transport Museum, together with the Moscow Museum, has prepared a gift — an exhibition project about art in the Moscow metro. Over its almost century-long history, the metro has come a long way: from the curiosity of the first passengers to the well-deserved title of its own, a native companion in moving around the city, the most beautiful and comfortable transport. The only thing that has not changed is the special attitude towards its architecture and aesthetics. The interiors and exteriors of many stations are a synthesis of art, embodying the principle of "gesamtkunstwerk". At the exhibition "High Underground" we propose to look at the metro space as the largest museum in the capital and even in the world, giving citizens the opportunity to live a unique cultural experience every day. This exhibition is an invitation to slow down, look at the familiar and see the new in the familiar," said Oksana Bondarenko, director of the Moscow Museum of Transport.

The Museum of Moscow will present unique photographs of the construction of metro stations and their opening at the exhibition. In addition, the exhibition will feature a number of exhibits from the museum's collections — Alexander Strelkov's escalator gallery project on Vorobyovy Gory in 1959, a relief insert with oak leaves for the Belorusskaya ring metro station in the 1950s, a tablet with ceramic tile samples from the Bulganin Moscow Ceramic Tile Factory in the 1930s, and a majolica a seamless cladding tile designed specifically for subway construction and used, for example, at the Komsomolskaya metro station to decorate crossings in the 1950s. Despite the fact that the exhibition is dedicated specifically to the Moscow metro, it was possible to collect exhibits from many Russian cities. The exhibition will feature a sketch for Avtozavodskaya metro station from the Penza Regional Art Gallery named after K.A. Savitsky, Pavel Korin's sketch for Alexander Nevsky's mosaic at Arbatskaya metro Station from the Rybinsk State Historical and Architectural Museum. and the Art museum-reserve and a decorative medallion for the Semyonovskaya station of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line, which was provided by the State Russian Museum.

"The Museum of Moscow, as the main city museum, of course, preserves the history of our Moscow Metro — from the first photographs of the construction of the 1930s to the opening of modern stations of the Moscow Central Ring and the Moscow Central Diameter. Therefore, when the Museum of Transport invited us to act as a partner in such an ambitious project designed to tell the 90-year history of the metro, we gladly agreed. In addition, our experience of working with a large number of partner museums was useful - artifacts related to the Moscow metro were literally collected all over the country," shared Anna Trapkova, General Director of the Museum Association Museum of Moscow.

The exposition of the exhibition "High Underground" is divided into four thematic blocks: "Familiar", "Forgotten", "Future" and "Unincarnated".

The Familiar section will feature originals and digital copies of works that passengers of the Moscow metro see every day — mosaics, stained glass windows, medallions, lamps, architectural details, as well as archival photographs and videos. Among the exhibits, for example, are Alexey Dushkin's original sketch for the Mayakovskaya station, which won the Grand Prix at the New York World's Fair in 1939, Pavel Korin's mock—up of the Pianist stained glass window for the Novoslobodskaya station, as well as a fragment of a porcelain capital for the Kievskaya station and a SK-300 ring lamp. By Abram Damsky.

The "Forgotten" section is dedicated to the artistic environment that disappeared from the metro over time: pavilions, reliefs, decorative elements that were lost during the reconstruction process or as a result of changes in the socio-political context. Here are models and sketches of the original designs of the Lubyanka and Kurskaya ground lobbies, the lost Okhotny Ryad lobby in the Moscow Hotel building, as well as a mock-up of the Paveletskaya station pavilion built into the Paveletsky Railway Station building today.

Part of the exhibition "The Future" looks to the future: a multimedia installation created using neural networks visualizes artistic solutions for new stations to be built in the near future.

The total installation "The Unembodied" presents architectural projects and artistic sketches that have not been realized — a metaphorical "paper subway". These are digital copies of the competitive projects of the Lenin Library and Avtozavodskaya metro stations, a sketch of the ground lobby of Boris Iofan's Baumanskaya metro station with unrealized sculptural compositions, and much more.