A major international exhibition, India—The Fabric of Time will open in Tsaritsyno
In the Grand Palace of the Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve the exhibition India—The Fabric of Time will open on December 23. It will be a continuation of the cycle of international and national projects based on the collections of city museums.
“The exhibition India—The Fabric of Time is not only a significant event in the cultural life of the capital, but also an important stage in the development of cooperation between our countries. A collection of fabrics and costumes from the National Handicrafts Museum in Delhi will be on display in Russia for the first time. These items will be complemented by exhibits from Russian museums, works by Russian and foreign designers and items from the private collections of fashion houses. Together the exhibits will tell about the influence of India’s textile traditions on global fashion,” said Alexei Fursin, Minister of the Moscow City Government, Head of the Moscow Department of Culture.
More than 300 exhibits will be on display. They will talk about the influence of Indian motifs on world fashion, and the way traditional patterns and techniques, symbols and codes are interpreted in the fashion and mass culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The exhibition will be housed in seven halls. Each will focus on a specific theme: the history of cotton, silk, wool, embroidery, dying, ornaments and saris. In the dying room, guests can learn about indigo dye, which has made jeans the most versatile garment in the world. Visitors will see unique examples of hand-sewn needlework, saris woven with natural gold, and turbans made of the finest muslin, and wedding blankets embroidered with bright silks from the Punjab province.
The Russian contributors to the exhibition will be the State Hermitage Museum, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Oriental Art, the State Historical Museum, the Andrei Rublev Museum and the Kosygin Russian State University. Russian brands, designers and fashion houses also provided their works for the exhibition. Some of the exhibits are taken from private collections.
The public program of the project will include more than 30 events organized with the participation of Russian designers and specialists in the field of fashion history. For young visitors and their parents there will be special tours around the exhibition and family workshops, and teenagers will have the chance to create their own collection of clothes in a special laboratory. For adults, there will be curated tours and lectures, a series of discussions on collecting and appropriation in the world of fashion, and workshops on sari tying, natural painting, and fabric printing.
The exhibition will run for nearly four months, until April 12, 2026. A ticket to the museum is required to visit the exhibition.
The project was curated by Lyudmila Alyabieva, Academic Director of the Graduate School of Art and Design at the Higher School of Economics National Research University, Ekaterina Shinkareva, Curator and Keeper of the Indian Collection at the Museum of Oriental Art, and Ms. Nidhi Harit from the National Crafts Museum in Delhi. The architect of the project was Maya Frolova. The theater artist Anastasia Nefedova worked on creating the unique atmosphere of an oriental garden for the exhibition, and Anna Kabirova, olfactory artist, will introduce the audience to the scents of the Orient.