Read Kate Sutton’s perceptive and informative Diary entry at Artforum.com. She describes the frisson of interest around Moscow’s Garage Center and what it was like to be one of the many artists there who did not get the Koons treatment. Here’s a taste, but please read the whole entry here:

LAST THURSDAY, Moscow’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture at long last reopened with a survey of works from François Pinault’s collection. According to curator Caroline Bourgeois, the exhibition’s title, “A Certain State of the World?,” was punctuated long before the economic crisis; nevertheless, over the past few months, this question mark has presided over the Garage’s activity––or, more fittingly, inactivity, as the space has remained closed since its much-feted Ilya and Emilia Kabakov retrospective last September. In the time since, the Moscow art world has occupied itself by inventing more and more outlandish conspiracy theories (implicating the Chelsea football team, rumored to be distracting Garage sponsor Roman Abramovich, and the Jewish Community Center, which was said to be plotting to take over the building) and speculation as to whether the Garage would ever reopen at all increased with the Pinault show’s delays.

State of Grace (Artforum)