This year’s winners of the prestigious Art Newspaper Russia Awards for outstanding achievements in the field of the arts received their prizes at an event studded with theatrical effects at the Pushkin Drama Theatre in Moscow.

This year the glittering annual Art Newspaper Russia Award ceremony event was styled as a theatrical event at the Pushkin Drama Theatre in Moscow. Unveiling the five winners in various categories – Museum of the Year, Exhibition of the Year, Book of the Year, Restoration of the Year, and Outstanding Personal Contribution – was a soirée orchestrated and finely managed by a script which director Alexei Agranovich referred to as “a search for recipes which bring harmony”.

Before the five winners were announced, the Art Newspaper Russia’s CEO Tatiana Sakhokiya took a moment to remember cultural figurehead and artist Zurab Tsereteli (1934–2025), whose funeral took place the same day: “It’s impossible to list all of his awards and titles…he was a man of immense talent and a generous spirit who helped colleagues and supported numerous cultural initiatives” she said. Editor-in-Chief Milena Orlova also expressed gratitude to Olga Yarutina, The Art Newspaper’s publisher, for launching a new supplement about small Russian towns called ‘Along the Way’, for publishing the newspaper’s first book – a collection of interviews with contemporary artists – and for opening its first exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, ‘This Is the Best We Have’.

The whole evening was filled with a sense of flamboyant drama. Conceived by director Alexei Agranovich, writer Alexei Belyakov, and video artist Kirill Preobrazhensky (b. 1970), from the very beginning the ceremony was a bit unusual: on a dark stage, there were two large Zoom screens, one showing Anton Kuznetsov an actor at the Satirikon Theatre, and the other showed a photograph of Anatoly Lunacharsky (1875–1933), the first People’s Commissar of Education, with the initials A.V. Lunacharsky plays the role of a client who is commissions a script for an exhibition project which is to be dedicated to the five main events of the year. Everything takes place on a summer’s evening in a picturesque city courtyard with an authentic 1957 Volga car. The entire ‘performance’ was also accompanied by music played and arranged by Andrei Polyakov.

As per tradition, the coveted trophy designed by artist Sergei Shekhovtsov (b. 1969) is presented to this year’s winners by previous laureates. Anna Yalova, director of the Central Exhibition Hall in the Manege presented the award in the ‘Museum of the Year’ category to the Tretyakov Gallery in Samara: The Factory Kitchen. Mikhail Savchenko, director of the State Tretyakov Gallery branch in Samara receiving it in person took the opportunity to invite everyone to visit his city, which, in addition to the new branch of the Tretyakov Gallery boasts 5 km-long beaches, and thanked his colleagues, including former Tretyakov director Zelfira Tregulova, who initiated the project, and current director Elena Pronicheva (as well as his mother Lyudmila Savchenko, who was director of the Samara Literary Museum for many years).

On stage, the tribute introducing The Factory Kitchen began with silhouettes of characters referring to Soviet adventure films like ‘The Elusive Avengers’ shown against a stage bathed in colours of a sunset, with an individual Hero reciting ‘Nikolai’ a monologue by late rock star Pyotr Mamonov. It was followed by footage from the museum and a video in which members of the museum’s staff arranged themselves to replicate the building's unique architecture in the shape of a monumental hammer and sickle.

The trophy given for the ‘Exhibition of the Year’ was presented by Olga Sviblova, director of the Multimedia Art Museum and the winner was ‘Ars vivendi. Frans Snyders and Flemish Still Life of the 17th Century’ at the Hermitage, “for the bright extravaganza and the bold imagination that transformed an academic exhibition into an entertaining performance”. The award was accepted by Mikhail Dedinkin, Head of the Western European Fine Arts Department and chief curator of the exhibition. Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky, who did not attend in person, noted in a video address that “The Art Newspaper Russia is a remarkable phenomenon in our lives, an excellent newspaper that is more interesting to read than its Italian and English versions”.

After what was an unusual rave amongst flowers, a dance routine dedicated to the exhibition and choreographed by Irina Kononova, it was time for the next nomination. To present the ‘Book of the Year’ award, architect, artist, and curator Yuri Avvakumov, who won the award back in 2019, came onto the stage to announce this year’s winner: the publication ‘To Work and To Live. Architecture of Constructivism. 1917–1937’, and Daria Filippova, director of the Zotov Centre, and curator Polina Streltsova collected it on stage. From the Zoom screen came a lament that “the constructivists designed everything perfectly. It’s not their problem that humans turned out to be imperfect, well, what can you do with them?”.

The ‘Restoration of the Year’ award was given “for restoring essential details and returning the authentic appearance of a unique monument of ancient Russian architecture” and was presented by Mikhail Mindlin, director of the Andrei Rublev Museum, to Archimandrite Ieronime, Dean of the Dormition Cathedral na Gorodkein in Zvenigorod, a small town near Moscow, and Georgy Evdokimov, scientific director of the restoration of the cathedral. After Midlin’s long speech about the significance of this historical monument, the 92-year-old archimandrite gave a brief yet moving response which brought some of the audience to tears.

Finally, art fair organizer and founder of Expo Park, Vasily Bychkov won the ‘Personal Contribution’ prize, which was presented to him by Sophia Trotsenko, founder of the Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art who won the same award in 2023. She emerged on stage with unruffled elegance appearing from inside the vintage Volga.

At the end of the show, back to the zoom screens, the client who commissioned the project returned to say a few words in conclusion: “Thank you for your work, but you know, we probably won’t accept it. It is expensive, and too ... I don’t know how to say it ... you’re just too clever, that’s the problem” and then everything wrapped up with a performance by Pavel Gogadze and a choir singing a version of ‘Rain’ by Russian rock singer Yuri Shevchuk.