The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow announced on April 17, 2025 the appointment of Dasha Kotova to his management, specifying that she was succeeding Anton Belov, in office since 2010. “I am enthusiastic and happy to enter a new stage in the history of the garage and I am convinced that with my colleagues, we will continue to make the garage a living and dynamic museum”she published on the museum website.
Born in 1989 in Moscow, Dasha Kotova graduated in 2010 from the Faculty of Journalism at the State University of Moscow. She has been working at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art for over 15 years, where she started as an assistant at the service of public relations. In 2014, she became responsible for development, marketing and advertising and in 2021 also took over the management of the museum’s endowment fund.
This announcement comes in the context of the war in Ukraine and the growing authoritarianism of the regime. In April 2024, Pyotr Verzilov, activist, co -founder of the independent media Mediazona And close to the feminist collective Pussy Riot, was sentenced in absentia in Russia to more than eight years in prison, especially for ” treason “after announcing that he would join the Ukrainian armed forces. As part of this case, the Russian authorities had searched the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, suspected links with Pyotr Verzilov. Several employees, including former director Anton Belov, had been interviewed. Little information had been disclosed, but the Russian media Kommersant had indicated that internal documents had been seized.
The museum had indeed organized exhibitions involving the Pussy Riot collective. In 2014 in particular, the exhibition “Russian Performance: A Cartography of Their History” highlighted their work. The museum website also mentioned the collective book, “Pussy Days”whose page has been deleted since, according to Kommersant.
According to several sources, including art critic Ksenia Korobeinikova via his Telegram channel and the media москвич mag, the home of Anton Belov would also have been searched. He has since left Russia and would live abroad.
Founded in 2008 in Moscow by the Romanesque couple Abramovitch and Dasha Zhukova, who always provides management despite their separation, the museum has established itself as a real hub of the Russian contemporary artist. Initially located in the old Bakhmetevsky bus garage, the museum moved in 2015 in a modernist pavilion from the 1960s renovated by Rem Koolhaas, in the heart of the Gorki park. In 2021, the garage launched an expansion project with the renovation of the hexagon pavilion, a 1923 structure made up of six pavilions around a central courtyard. Entrusted to the Japanese Cabinet Sanaa, this transformation aims to create a space of 9,500 m² including three exhibition galleries, a library, a bookstore, a coffee and an interior courtyard accessible to the public, with an opening scheduled in 2026. However, in response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022, the museum has suspended all its exhibitions. Coffee and the shop are nevertheless open and film screenings take place.
