New Building of the Bakhrushin Museum will Open in Moscow in 2021

A modern museum and theater center with an area of about four thousand square meters will open on the territory of a historic manor next to the main building of the museum. A souvenir shop, exhibition halls, a lecture hall and a café will be located there.

A new building with a lecture hall, exhibition halls, a souvenir shop and a cafe will appear at the A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum.  A modern center with an area of about four thousand square meters will open at No, 20 Tatarskaya Street. The project for a four-story building reconstruction was approved by Moskomarkhitektura, It was developed by the architectural and restoration workshop Arcada-NT.

The house in Tatarskaya Street was designed by the architect Leonid Grinshpun and built in 1937 for a general education school. During World War II, the building was converted into a hospital, where the wounded were brought from Paveletsky railway station. In recent years, a medical unit was located there. In 2016 the house, which already needed a large-scale renovation, was given to the Bakhrushin Museum. The new building opening is scheduled for 2021.

The building is not a listed object. However, it is located next to the main building of the Theater Museum (No. 31/12, Building 1 Bakhrushin Street,), which has the status of a federal cultural heritage site. The restoration of its facades was completed last summer.

“During reconstruction, the builders will reinforce the load-bearing walls of the house, replace the wooden floor slabs with metal ones, strengthen the foundations and renew the roof. The building will be painted in the same color as the main part. The decorations on the facades (flat pilasters (half-columns) and horizontal elements in the shape of a belt) will also be fixed up. The premises of the new building will be repaired and equipped with a modern climate control system, which is essential for the storage of especially valuable museum exhibits”- said Sergey Kuznetsov, Chief Architect of Moscow.

After the reconstruction, on the ground floor of the museum and theater center there will be a souvenir shop and a cafe with a summer terrace. On the first floor exhibition halls dedicated to the modern theater will be located. Educational lecture hall will also be made. Not only lectures, but also conferences, meetings with well-known art historians, artists and directors will be held there.

The Bakhrushin Museum is the largest theater museum in Europe. Its collection contains more than 1.5 million exhibits, such as paintings and sketches of costumes and scenery by outstanding masters of scenography, as well as photographs and portraits, stage costumes and personal belongings of great actors, programs and playbills, rare books about the theater, samples of decorative arts and sculpture.