All-Russia Exhibition Centre is one of the most popular resorts in Moscow, where you can spend your free time skating, riding a bike or skateboarding. If you haven’t got a bicycle or roll-skates, you can rent them for reasonable price. The complex of All-Russia Exhibition Centre is a monument of Stalin-Style architecture and garden art as well, which were creating not only the myths, but also environment for the New Human of coming communism. The buildings of pavilions initially dealing with all the soviet republics and branches of national economy and now are turned into exhibition and sale areas. There are some permanent exhibitions and museums there as well, and such more common things like the largest in Europe Big wheel and playgrounds for children.

Initially, this complex was designed as an exhibition area combined with the Park of Culture and Rest, where the people could spend their free time, learning something new and useful about achievements of their colleagues from other regions and republics. It is a whole exhibition town (it occupies more than 20 hectares!), where all the soviet myths live, some times ironically re-coded. One of the main points of this complex is a fountain of Friendship of peoples: it was a symbol of… actually of the friendship between the peoples of the Soviet Union. Its composition included statues of the women – personifications of the republics with the fruit of their lands in their hands. How all the young people try to find the lady with a sheaf of hemp, definable by its specific leaves and are very glad if they find. I haven’t still. Some of them say it is a lady of Kazakhstan, others that it is definitely Ukraine. Maybe, there is a lady of some other republic, maybe she exists in the people’s mind, like all the myths.

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Going back to our topic, the complex consisted of the grand arch entrance, with the famous Vera Mukhina’s sculpture The Worker and Collective Farm Woman on the 50 metres tower of the Main Pavilion. It is a monumental white building with colonnade. It was decorated with the arms of all the Soviet Republics and the Soviet Union. After the main Pavilion the visitors found themselves on the Square of the Collective farms, which is surrounded with the buildings of the pavilions of the Republics from the Arctic North to subtropical South, which are situated around the square and in the alleys going from the square as well. Some of the pavilions like Horse Breeding are situated rather far from the Square of the Collective Farms, which is the centre of the composition of all Exhibition Centre. The pavilions devoted to the Republic contained the characteristic elements of the local architecture or they were decorated in the way, indicating it’s specific.

All of it still stays around the square with fountains, and even still functions like exhibition squares. Some of the buildings however need restoration. Among all of it walks the public, or rides bicycles, or rinking, or moving on hardly determinable devices.

Among the places to visit there I would advice you are some exhibitions.

The unique art playground Plane was opened on the June, 14, 2009 in the cabin of the legendary liner of Yak-42. This plane, turned into an art gallery is actually a preproduction model, which was being tested before its mass producing. This machine was introduces to the public in 1979 on the Paris Air Show in the city of Le Burge, France, and produced a sensation. In 1981 a record in the range of flight was set on this aircraft. The pilot’s cabin was fully restored and main cabin was adapted for exhibitions by the opening the Plane as a gallery. The designers have redecorated it in the style of functionalism. The exhibitions replace each other, but all of them are tied with the trends of contemporary art.

Fairy Tale House Once upon a time…

The child’s theatre and Museum Once upon a time, founded in 1995 is the one-of-a-kind museum and theatre dealing with fairy tales. This museum is a fellow of the International Association of Children’s Museums, well-known in Russia and abroad.

During the theatrical tours carried out in the museum, the children learn the traditions and customs of the different peoples; they get acquainted with creations of artists and writers, dealing with fairy tales. The children take an active hand in the excursions, personating their favorite fairy-tale characters.

The exhibition consists of household items, costumes, old dolls, pictures and books and the little visitors are allowed not only to look at them, but to touch and to take as well.

The Fairy Tale House Once upon a time is situated in the pavilion N 8.

Moscow Butterfly House

The Moscow Butterfly House is the only one in Moscow and the first one in Russia exhibition of the live tropic butterflies from South-East Asia, Africa and South America. It is situated in the greenhouse in the pavilion N2 of the Exhibition Centre. About 500 butterflies of about 50 species play among tropical plants and fountains. The wing spread of some of them reaches 25 – 30 cm. All the necessary conditions for their life are created in the greenhouse; and the butterflies set on the visitors' clothes, but you may not touch them: you can hurt their wings which are very tender.

In 2008 the exposition was completed with a MiniZoo with exotic insects, arthropods, amphibians and reptiles. Some species from the exhibition can be bought. So, if you’d like to buy a tarantula, you can do it there. In 2009 the exhibition of butterflies was shaded with Macro pictures of insects made by photographers of community "Macroclub". The photo exhibition was called "Planet of Insects".

The butterfly House is a rather popular place to visit at the Exposition Centre. The guided excursions are carried out by an experienced guide-entomologist, so the visitors learn something new. Moreover, the actions for and in support vulnerable groups take place there under the "Butterflytherapy" charity program. The rampant for disabled people on the wheelchairs is provided in the building. Children before 3, first-formers and newlyweds on the wedding day visit the exhibition free.

Ice-Age museum

The Ice-Age museum in the 11th pavilion is the largest Russian private Paleontological Museum. It was founded in 2004 for the purposes of popularization of the knowledge about species of the Ice Age. The exhibition of the museum is created on the basis of very reach Paleontological materials, collected in the expeditions in the north-east of Yakutia, Chukotka, Altai and Southern Urals. The visitor's attention is invited such things as skeletons of woolly rhinoceros, cave bears, bisons, and mammoth, of course. Among the artifacts are such curious ones as mummified horse's leg with skin, hair and hoof preserved and cave lion's scull.

The sound and light effects accompany the exhibition. Some of the designer's decisions applied in this exhibition space were applied in the museum practice for the first time.

One part of the museum deals with the samples of bone carving art, made of the mammoth's bone. This material was always considered as a luxury one; and the wares made of it were always considered as luxury items.

Most of the paleontological objects exhibited in the museum, were taken from the permafrost. They are actually unique material for studying the DNA of animals of the Ice Age and the scientists from all over the world have already seized this opportunity and wrote articles and monographs. And at the moment some artifacts are studied under several international research projects.

Virtual environment exhibition

This exhibition situated in the Pavilion N9 brings to your notice such thing as 5D cinemas one for the adults and one for the children, and inflatable planetarium. The organizers of this exhibition pretend to gather the most interesting state-of-the art technologies achievements of Russia and abroad in the area of cinema and videogames. Each showpiece is an exclusive one.

The 5D cinema is equipped with two mobile platforms for 7 viewers each one. Application of some technologies creates illusion, which lets to feel the wind and spindrift. 7-channel sound should be added to it as well as the amazing quality volumetric images and impressive movement. The only one in Moscow 5D cinema for children is also equipped with mobile platforms for 7 viewers and extra effects to feel the movement of the air and even smells and tactual sensations. All of it intended to create an illusion of the total-immersion.

The second really notable thing is an inflatable planetarium, situated next to the fountain of Friendship of peoples. You can visit it using the ticket for Pavillion N9. When you enter this sphere you are in the centre of our planetary system, the images of the objects of which (stars, planets, comets etc) are projected on the walls. The show begins with the trip around our galaxy. The films on the sphere screen are playing non stop. Educational and entertainment programs for children and animated films with an overview of 360 degrees will amuse any visitor. The planetarium is open daily, from 10. 00 to 19.00. The show begins every half an hour.

Art-Underground

Art-Underground is a little unusual art exhibition, and this fact is insinuated with the subtitle of it: art of the abnormal. This lovesome definition was given to the artists taking part in this exhibition by Valery Pereverzev, the project head manager of the Corporal Punishments History Museum, which has been recently opened at the Exhibition Centre. These artists create strange dolls, not correlating with the common concept of a doll. They contrast sharply with the world of princesses and Cinderellas and other fairy tale characters like these.

The project has gathered the funky and strange dolls and demonstrates to them to the visitors, the dolls, representing in a curious and unexpected way the characters of the fairy tales and the images from the nightmares. They weren’t initially created for exhibitions, salons or sell. All of them are created to reflect very personal emotions and experience of the people created them. The dolls form series, representing a self-dependent storyline.

The fantasy and unexpected apparition, but the materials the dolls are made of. Glass, wood, plastic, paper, leather, metal, polymer clay turn into strange characters in the artists’ hands.

There are also objects of charity: the doll, representing a girl from the famous Japanese horror film The Ring. It was made under patronage and on the money of one pop singer, well-known in Russia. You can come and look at them every day from 10. 00 to 19. 00.

Anyway, the All-Russia Exhibition Centre, which was initially created as a model of the Soviet Union with all its peoples and their achievements, keeps something from it now: there are lots of temporary and permanent exhibitions with original production and souvenirs, but the space of it extends to all over the world now, and a walk there can be turned into the journey through the time and space, with tropics and Russian regions, Ice Age and state-of-the art technologies, and the world of the imagination. The Soviet myth is aesthetically re-thought in it in a post-modern way, and the legendary plane serves an art playground, and the symbol of the Friendship of the peoples turns into an ambiguous puzzle.

Yulia Buzykina

Source:
    www.vvcentre.ru