I am back from my summer travels to Eastern Europe, and wanted to share about my experiences while everything is still {relatively} fresh in my memory.
I was deeply impressed by the Costume Design at the Turn of the Century exhibit at the Bakhrushin Museum in Moscow, and so delighted and honored to be part of it, that I will start there. Truthfully, I did not know exactly what to expect -- I had never been to the Museum before, and only knew that a multitude of international curators had been working on this project for a number of years. And trulyā¦it was magnificent: almost the entirety of the museum has been dedicated to costumes, renderings, videos, and other artifacts showcasing the work of many designers I've been admiring basically my whole life. This is truly the first and only exhibit of this kind, focusing exclusively on the vision of the costume designer-as-artist.
The Museum has multiple locations throughout Moscow, but our exhibition was held in the main building: the former home of famous merchant and theater-lover Aleksey Aleksandrovich Bakhrushin.
Most of the main building of the Museum had been dedicated to the Exhibit, with three large halls on the second floor, a vast gallery on the first floor, and an entire separate building (also called the Carriage House) for original paintings and renderings. All of the work was arranged by country in alphabetical order. Here is one of the walls of the United States section of the exhibit -- what an incredible experience to see my work up next to so many other amazingly talented artists! Sadly my camera didn't really like the lighting inside the museum, so the pictures are not in total focus, but its better than nothing
Yours truly next to my pieces during the opening. I was so overwhelmed by the sheer size of the exhibit, the quality of work, and the number of people present, I have to confess I'm not entirely certain what happened, but I was very happy and grateful to be there. The Museum also put together a beautiful bilingual catalog of the exhibition, which is something that I think I will treasure for a very long time.
(Maria Thomas and Aurelia Cohen from Rusalki. Photos taken by Noah Huber in 2009. You can read more about the story of the Rusalki project here.)
(Two designs from an unrealized production of King Stag from 2013. You can see the full set of renderings here.)
Although I took lots of images of other people's work, many of my photos came out quite blurry, so I won't bother putting them up here. Instead, I recommend checking out the Exhibit's website, which also serves as a full online gallery of all of the artists featured in the exhibition. If you are an artist, costume/character designer, scenographer, performer, or educator in those fields, I guarantee you will find a tremendous amount of inspiration there. A huge thank you to the Museum and the curators of this wonderful and deeply ambitious project!
