[www.garageccc.com](www.garageccc.com)

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the establishment of the first public library dedicated to contemporary art in Russia, opening in December 2014. Led by Head of Research Sasha Obukhova, the library constitutes the largest specialized public collection of books in Russia dedicated to art of the 20th and 21st centuries. The collection comprises over 15,000 items, including rare antiquarian editions, monographs by leading art scholars, catalogues of group exhibitions and museum collections, artists’ biographies, journals on contemporary art and architecture, and publications on the theory of culture. The library will be open to the public, and the archive will be available by appointment for specialists.

Sasha Obukhova states, “I am pleased to announce that after two years of intensive work we open Russia’s first public library on the history of contemporary art. Students, artists, researchers, professionals, and amateurs can come anytime and take advantage of early, hard-to-reach information on the history of international and Russian contemporary art. The next step is to work on the archive materials’ digital conversion and the formation of an electronic base available for access all over the world.”

In 2012 Garage acquired the comprehensive archive, which includes the documents, videos, and library from the Art Project Foundation. Library publications have been accumulated through strategically procured donations, gallery archives, and purchases from vintage booksellers. In addition, with the mission of creating an oral history of Russian contemporary art to underscore the archive, in June 2013 Garage began conducting interviews with artists across generations about their work and influences. Garage is gradually collecting and editing more material to be made available online by June 2015, and the entirety of Garage’s archive is being digitally converted with the goal of launching in 2017.