Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. An Incident in the Museum and other Installations

On 22 June 2004 the first large exhibition in Russia of works by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov opened in the General Staff building. The exhibition signifies the return of the artists to their homeland after their departure abroad in 1988. The exhibition has been organized by the State Hermitage together with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Stella Art Gallery, Moscow. Support has been provided by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. The show presents several installations and includes more than 80 drawings, 16 paintings, and sketches, design models and photographs from various museums and private collections with commentary from the artist.

Ilya Kabakov is a very famous Russian artist whose works enjoy high demand and are considered to be classics of modern art. He has created more than 200 installations in a number of different countries. His works are found in the collections of many museums around the globe, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Centre Georges Pompidou as well as the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris, and the Museum fur angewandte Kunst in Vienna, to name several.

To mark the opening of the exhibition there will also be an international symposium that has been organized by the State Hermitage together with CEC Arts Link and the Pro Arte Institute, St Petersburg. This will take place on 23 June 2004 in the Hermitage Theater. Ilya and Emilia Kabakov will take part in the symposium along with foreign and Russian art critics and art historians.

Two installations by Ilya Kabakov entitled In the Closet (1997) and The Toilet in the Corner (1992) will be donated to the State Hermitage and will be on permanent display in the museum of modern art which is planned for the General Staff complex.

The curators of the exhibition are Germano Chelant,, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and Arkady Ippolitov, Department of Western European Art, and Anna Konivets, both of the State Hermitage.

A scholarly illustrated catalogue to the exhibition has been prepared and includes articles by Germano Chelant, Boris Groys, Arkady Ippolitov and Robert Storr.

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Ilya Kabakov

Emilia Kabakov

Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky and Emilia Kabakov at the opening of the exhibition

At the exhibition

The catalogue