The 6 th Moscow Art Awards exhibition of contemporary art opens in Zaryadye Park

The exhibition of shortlisted works in the 6 th Moscow Art Awards opened in Zaryadye Park on November 12. The awards recognize contributions to the development of contemporary art: works that have become a significant phenomenon in the cultural life of the capital over the past year and a half.

“This season was the biggest in the history of the competition, with over a thousand entries. The shortlist includes more than 70 projects in the categories of Fine Arts and Architecture, Music, Cinema, Theatre and Literature. All of them are in one way or another connected with the capital,” said Alexei Fursin, Minister of the Moscow City Government, Head of the Moscow Department of Culture.

There are three themed criteria for inclusion: In Moscow — the work was created in the capital, About Moscow — the work is dedicated to the city, or For Moscow — it is commissioned by a city institution. The best projects have been included in a large-scale exposition that will familiarize viewers with the shortlisted works. The exhibition will run through February 1, 2026.

“The Moscow Art Awards is not just a list of the best works of the season. The project shows how the relationship between culture and society is changing, and what values are important to the creators of different works. In culture there is a place for civic society, for art history research, and for aesthetic innovation, and all these benefit the city and its residents,” said Ivan Demidov, director of Zaryadye Park.

In the category Fine Art and Architecture, more than 30 projects of contemporary artists are presented. Among them is the third annual exhibition Svoyasi. The Path of Modern Art, which brings together artists exploring national traditions in search of new meanings and forms. These include Lyudmila Shevchenko, one of the winners of the 5 th Triennale of Textile Art and Contemporary Tapestry: Diversity of Connections — Threads, Breaks and Links, with a work entitled Steaming. There are also works from the exhibition project Zurab Tsereteli — Sunny Garden, including works from the series I Was Born a Gardener, and a full-length film, Zurab, which will be shown twice a day in the Cinema zone.

The exhibition And I Saw a New Heaven and a New Earth, by Anton Belikov and Svetlana Cheprova is presented in the same category. It is dedicated to reflections on the fate of the soldier and images of war. The exhibition also presents sketches of monumental murals and mosaic designs by Leonid Polishchuk and Svetlana Shcherbina, created for the building of the scientific library of the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, from the Museum of Moscow’s project Art in Scale — Monumental Painting of Moscow. Visitors will see a model of Nikolai Polissky’s solo exhibition Electro Art, for which the artist has created a plastic metaphor of a modern metropolis, entangled with electrical wires.

Writers including Igor Maltsev, Alexei Kolesnikov, Kirill Ryabov, Anna Chukhlebova, Dmitry Lekukh and others are among the participants in the Literature category. Visitors can access both physical and electronic versions of new books from the 2024/2025 season.

The Music zone will feature multimedia displays of new works by Vladimir Rannev, Petr Glavatskikh, Nikolai Popov, Pavel Pankovsky, Anna Pospelova, Sergey Uvarov and other popular record label artists.

In the Cinema zone, visitors can watch feature and documentary films and series by Sergei Mokritsky, Kirill Polikarpov, Daria Shumakova and Maxim Gureyev, as well as clips from performances by Yuri Kvyatkovsky, Oleg Lipovetsky, Galina Zaltsman and Yana Sekste, and from popular productions in Moscow theatres.

When developing the architectural concept of the exhibition, the organizers were inspired by the rich palette of textures and materials that characterize different historical epochs in the capital’s life. The space is decorated with wooden cladding — a reference to the traditions of Russian wooden architecture, composite materials which evoke the gleam of gold on domes, the facade tiles used in the 1980s and concrete — a symbol of the modern metropolis.

The show will be open to visitors over the age of six, and the Cinema zone will be open to those over the age of 16. Tickets are available through the Mosbilet service.

The winners of the 6 th Moscow Art Awards will be determined by an expert jury made up of more than two dozen leading specialists in all the featured areas. The awards ceremony will be held on November 25 in the Media Center in Zaryadye Park.