“The New Academy. St Petersburg”

November 2, 2011 – January 29, 2012

Venue: the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation

This exhibition is dedicated to the New Academy, founded by Timur Novikov, which united the most different artists – or, rather, the unique phenomenon of St. Petersburg artistic life in the 1990s and 2000s. The Academy's history begins in 1990, when Timur – who was already well known as head of the New Artists – suddenly changed course to "classic and beauty," proclaiming it to be far more actual and contemporary than 20th-century modernism. This culminated in the foundation of the New Academy, where Timur and his associates reproduced academic rituals in a manner not devoid of a certain crafty ambiguity. The Academy's core task became the creation of fully visual works to counterbalance the modernist concepts which were deprived of such visualism. The task in itself is completely conceptual if we take the original meaning of the word, conceptio – that is, the presence of some guiding idea. At the time of an intended un-picturesque character in late modernism, the idea of "classic and beauty" sounded highly radical and defined the New Academy's activity. The result was an affirmation of Russian neo-academicism that became a noticeable and influential movement at the start of the new millennium.

"New Academy. Saint-Petersburg" exhibition catalogue

An important event for the Foundation was the publication of the “New Academy. Saint- Petersburg” exhibition catalogue. The New Academy founded in 1989 by Timur Novikov is one of the leading movements of Russian art of the late 20-th – early 21-th century.

The catalogue contains the articles, written by art historians and art critics: Arkady Ippolitov, Andrei Khlobystin, Ekaterina Andreeva, Alexander Borovsky. The articles present different points of view and give different judgments about the art of the New Academy. The catalogue also contains a detailed chorography by Ksenia Novikova, the director of the NAFA Museum.