Displaying items by tag: dasha zhukova

The Russian collector and philanthropist Dasha Zhukova is donating $1m to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to establish a “distinguished visiting artist” position.

The spot will be awarded to an artist, architect or designer and covers a one-to-two-year residency at the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology where they will be encouraged to conduct new research and develop a body of work in collaboration with the faculty, students and researchers.

Nearly three years after Garage Museum of Contemporary Art founder Dasha Zhukova and architect Rem Koolhaas first revealed designs for the Moscow museum’s new building in Gorky Park, Garage has announced that its new home will open on June 12.

When Zhukova first opened the institution circa 2008 as the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, the art center was housed in the 1926 Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, an icon of Russian avant-garde architecture designed by Konstantin Melnikov and Vladimir Shukhov. In 2012, the museum announced it would be relocating to the city center, and commissioned Shigeru Ban (this year’s Pritzker Prize laureate) to construct a temporary cardboard pavilion in Gorky Park while Koolhaas and his Rotterdam-based firm OMA worked on the museum’s nearby permanent home.

Russian socialite and art collector Dasha Zhukova announced that the new Garage Museum of Contemporary Art will open in Moscow in June 2015. The Garage, which was founded in 2008 by Zhukova and her billionaire boyfriend Roman Abramovich, is currently located in a temporary, Shigeru Ban-designed building in Gorky Park. The institution features an extensive program of exhibitions, events, education, research, and publishing that focuses on current developments in Russian and international culture, creating opportunities for public dialogue, as well as the production of new work and ideas in Moscow. The museum’s collection is the first archive in the country related to the development of Russian contemporary art from the 1950s through the present.

The new space, which is in the same neighborhood as the museum’s current location, is being designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).

After two years in beta, Art.sy’s public version went live this past Monday. Using intuitive sites such as Pandora and Netflix as guides, Art.sy gets to know its users and presents them with suggestions and recommendations based on their individual likes and dislikes. Art.sy offers a free repository of 20,000 and counting digitized fine art images as well as an art appreciation guide. Art.sy can already count 275 galleries, private collectors, and 50 museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art, SFMoMA, and Fondation Beyeler as partners.

A start-up backed by millions of dollars in venture capital from art world giants such as Larry Gagosian and Dasha Zhukova, Art.sy already has 600,000 registered users. The site is moving past mere image sharing and has begun partnering with major art fairs, serving as the exclusive online platform for Design Miami/ in December and the Armory Show in March.

Art.sy offers a unique experience to collectors, allowing them to speak with a specialist, connect directly to a gallery, or submit offers on works remotely. A different feature on the site will allow collectors to buy outright as long as the dealer chooses to utilize the e-commerce option. Art.sy plans to bring in most of its revenue from sales commissions on works sold through the site.