Turning the Pushkin Museum into a ‘Russian Tate’: Informal creative labour in a transitional cultural economy (the case of privately funded Moscow art centres)

Abstract

This article investigates the creative work that is now taking place in newly established cultural institutions in Moscow, the non-governmental museums of contemporary art (MoCAs). The exploration of creative work in Russian art centres is of particular interest because it promises to record the transition of the contemporary art market from the Soviet-era cultural monopoly to the market economy, during the real-time formation of new, informal standards of cultural production. The present article evaluates what informality means within these new standards of the organization of creative work: while standing for culture ‘in a new and innovative way’, the new art centres preserve many residues of the ‘old system’, such as the practices of blat, favour-swapping and clientelism. The article is based on an empirical study conducted in 2016 which included 25 in-depth interviews with cultural workers employed full-time, and 20 live observations in offices and exhibition areas of the art centres.