Exceptional Modern Art in this Historic City - Review of Erarta Museum Of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia

Name: Exceptional Modern Art in this Historic City
Item: Erarta Museum Of Contemporary Art
Rating: 5

katimil

San Francisco, California

5019

Reviewed July 23, 2013

Exceptional Modern Art in this Historic City

The Erata is a private museum located in a former Communist Party HQ building which has been beautifully remodeled to house this exceptional collection. Seeing modern art dating back to soviet times (much of it is by artists who were "underground") is a stark contrast to the opulence of the tzars' palaces. We had an excellent local guide who was very knowledgeable about the collection. Allow plenty of time, as with other Russian guides, she wanted to give us all the details about any picture we stopped to admire and those that she chose to highlight. We plan to visit their satellite museum in NYC in the fall.

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This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC.

Hello katimil,
We are happy to hear you enjoyed the architectural aspect of our museum. It is truly a grand building in late Stalinist Empire style which provided us with 8000 sqr m to exhibit our permanent collection and host various temporary exhibitions. Good point about the time! There is certainly plenty to see on all five floors both in the museum and gallery wings but you can always have a coffee-break in our café and restore your energy levels! If you enjoyed our collection so much you should certainly visit our gallery in New York (also in Zurich and London)! All our branch galleries have a variety of original artworks by Russian contemporary artists for sale. They also organise solo- and group-shows by emerging and well-established artists so there is always something on! We will be happy to hear about your visit in the fall. Safe travels!

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SCREENParis

PARIS

8739

Reviewed July 22, 2013

Contemporary art made accessible to everyone

I've quite found of contemporary art, I go to various exhibits in museums and private galleries, I enjoy it but sometimes I'm rebuffed by the elitist atmosphere at those exhibitions,Erarta takes the opposite road and chooses to make contemporary art accessible to everyone, and they are very successful in doing it. The displays are on 5 storeys, organized by topics, with dedicated rooms for videos, and rooms where you need to book in advance to see performance.
The location is a bit outside of historic center, there are interesting buildings in the area that make it interesting to visit.
The staff is great, very welcoming and responsive to emails. All this made me want to visit the other Erartas in London and around the world.

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Hello SCREENParis,
It is really nice to know you’ve enjoyed your visit to our museum. Here at Erarta we try our best to create a relaxed and friendly atmosphere suitable for a memorable aesthetic experience. Apart from our vast collection, we also have unique projects, such as U-space, which also help us in our quest for popularising Russian contemporary art locally and abroad. We hope you managed to see some of them. Thank you for your kind review and we look forward to see you in any of our branch galleries in London, Zurich and New York. Or maybe you can even make it to Hong Kong where we open a gallery in autumn!

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KB225

Brooklyn, New York

22

Reviewed July 21, 2013

Great museum in St. Petersburg

This was our second stop in a tour of Contemporary Art in St. Petersburg (the first being the State Russian Museum). I thought the Erarta was a fabulous museum and it was definitely one of the highlights of our stop in St. Petersburg. One of their goals of the Museum is to make art accessible to the people and I think they do a great job of that. I was surprised to find out they also have a gallery here in NYC as well. I would highly recommend this museum!

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Dear KB22,
Thank you for your positive review. It’s very inspirational for us to know that we are doing a good job bringing visitors closer to contemporary art. We have U-Space, Art Literature and Art Animation to help us with the task but we also keep on inventing new ways. We are happy to welcome both contemporary art lovers and guests who are about to start their exploration. We have many ways of engaging viewers in a creative dialogue and we are sure everyone will find something special in our Museum.
We do hope you had a safe trip back to US and we look forward to seeing you in our New York gallery!

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Bjorn C

32

Reviewed July 20, 2013

The best I've seen in years

I haven't enjoyed a museum of contemporary art this much for years! With five floors, there's a lot to see at Erarta, and not one of the many exhibitions was uninteresting or mediocre. In fact, most of the exhibitions were truly excellent. How they do it, I don't know, because I've been to many modern art museums around the world when I've been disappointed, or only liked one or two paintings out of a large number of exhibits. With galleries in London, New York, Zurich and Hong Kong, I'll make a point of looking them up when I'm in one of those cities next.

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Dear Bjorn C,
Thank you for taking time to visit Erarta and for your review.
Wow, you really made our day- it’s amazing to get praised by a contemporary art lover!
The main principle our collection is based on is each work’s capacity to provoke an emotional response and express a universal idea that will be accessible to everyone. Only a truly talented artist is capable of creating such a piece and that is the secret of our collection.
We are glad you’ve pointed out that Erarta Gallery is an international project- we work hard to promote Russian contemporary art locally and abroad.
All reviews with kind words in them make us even more enthusiastic about what we do!
Thank you for visiting us and we look forward to having you back at Erarta one day.

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Chelsea S

St. Petersburg, Russia

11

Reviewed July 4, 2013

Not your typical Russian Museum

Erarta is a fantastic place to visit. Not only is it a museum, but a gallery as well. The art is contemporary Russian art, and it grouped by theme. I found that they did a great job of making the art feel relatable. I mean this in the sense that I am not a huge art person, and contemporary art scares me. Erarta displays the art in a way that you can connect with it. They actually continue some of the pieces they have out into real life. For example, they may have a piece with apples in it, and they will have apples out for you to eat in front of it.

They also have these amazing exhibits called "U spaces". These are work paying extra for. These spaces are fully immersive, almost as though you are in the art piece. They invoke a variety of emotions based off of which room are you in. I have never experienced anything such as this in the U.S. I really think its a new, innovative way to look at art, and I really felt like it was more "user-friendly" to those who may not have a huge art background.

On top of all of this, they also have a friendly staff. They do speak English, which is nice considering that most other museums I have ventured to in St. Petersburg do not have English-speaking staff, or speakers that speak so well.

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Dear Chelsea S! Thank you for your review and all good words about Erarta.
Happy to know that you caught the idea of how the collection is systematized. You are absolutely right to mark that we worked hard in order to make contemporary art closer to our visitors. We have several paintings combined with installations which continue depicted stories. It is somewhat a dialogue of an artist with a viewer. This connection with art is of a great importance, as it makes our guests behold the works not just as a piece of art craft. Everyone should look from the point of view of its idea, plot and meaning. That is the main aspect: don’t look at the painting analyzing strokes of the paintbrush, realism and technique- the main is the idea which is based in it. The most interesting is that each viewer can fit it on his life and his experience. Our unique project ‘U-Space’ is just one of the means to transform those who ‘look’ into those who ‘feel’.
We are glad to get feedback from guests, satisfied with the work of our team. Thanks to you we know that we are doing right, so we’ll keep up the same way.
We hope you had a safe trip back to U.S. We look forward to welcoming you back next time!

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