Russian and Rich: Art’s New Tastemaker

By CAROL VOGEL

LONDON

ONE day in December, Dasha Zhukova wandered into the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, a giant red-brick Constructivist-era landmark near the Olympic Stadium in Moscow. She was immediately entranced by the space, a vast parallelogram spanning nearly 92,000 square feet and an unusual array of vertical and circular windows. Designed in 1926 by Konstantin Melnikov, the garage is much loved by architects.

“I thought Moscow should have a space like this for contemporary art,” Ms. Zhukova, 27, said in an interview, sipping a cappuccino in the top-floor cafe of the Tate Modern here. “There is a huge thirst for knowledge among the younger generation for contemporary art, but most of them learn about it by going on the Internet.”

It was a serendipitous discovery for Ms. Zhukova. Thanks to her, the cavernous building will reopen next month as the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, a nonprofit institution that brings art to Moscow and schools the public on what it’s about. Its first show will be a retrospective of the artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.

Overnight, Ms. Zhukova’s new center and her connections, including a billionaire, art-collecting boyfriend, have made her an art-world It Girl. Her sudden fame attests to the seismic effect that Russian money — and in some cases Ukrainian or Georgian money — is having.

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