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annualreportthe polytechnic museum2016

Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum2 3

CONTENTS

10 Preparing the building11 Facades13 The Big Auditorium14 The Northern courtyard16 Server rooms17 What the renovation

unveiled

20 Permanent exhibition24 The Hall of Fame26 Library28 The Big Museum30 Children’s Museum

36 The Polytech Festival44 Lecture Hall46 The Polytech collection

at Tekstilschiki48 The Library Night50 Meanwhile in the scientific labs54 SKVT56 The Children’s University58 360° Film Festival64 The publishing program66 Museum volunteers70 Media Projects73 Exhibitions at our partners’

venues74 Cosmos: Birth of New Age82 Earth Lab86 200 Keystrokes per Minute91 Exhibitions in Pavilion 26

at the VDNH92 Living under the Microscope94 Codes. Sounds. Signs98 The AEgean Sea: the Birth of the Archipelago

4 NUMBERS

9 CONSTRUCTION 19 PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS 35 2016 PROJECTS 101 PARTNERS


The lecture hallThe library

Scientific labs The Polytech Festival 360° Festival

12 489 people over the year 1 400 sessions

33 000+ people over two days

7 000+ attendees

3 217 people over the year119 lectures6 368 people over the year

unique visitors of the Polytechnic Museum’swebsite

subscribers of theMuseum’s newsletter

NUMBERS

64 304visitors of the Polytechnic Museum’s enlightening projects

748 092

29 500

The Children’s University

Scientific Battles

2 230 students over the year830 sessions

2 147 people in the audience8 battles in Norilsk, Zapolarny,Nizhni Novgorod, Tomsk and Minsk


2016 2017

37 017 11 473

29 301 118 031

3568

350 000

January JanuaryFebruary March April May June July August September October November DecemberDecember

2016 2017

Alice in the Scienceland (at Ufa)

Alice in the Scienceland (at Orsk)

200 keystrokes per minute (at the MMOA)

Cosmos: Birth of the New Age (at the VDNH)

Life under the Microscope(at Museon)

Earth Lab (at Digital October)

605 576people have attended the Polytechnic Museum’s exhibitions in 2016

Russia Does Itself was attended by 71 239 people with 663 excursions overall

5 412 people have visited the open funds with 364 excursions overall

visitors

visitors

visitors

visitors

visitors

visitors

8 � Политехнический�музей 9 Annual Report 2016

The ConstructionThe year 2016 has become the year of the historical building’s global renovation and the final inception of the exhibition’s concept. Dozens of Russia’s top scientists, artists, architects and curators are working to create a new museum. We will dedicate the next year to translating their ideas into the real items of the exhibition. Now we’re entering the final phase of creating the new Polytechnic museum. The world’s best museum of science.

We renovate and preserve the historical building while completely rethinking the inner space. Nearly the entire building will be open for visitors. There will be more labs, exhibition areas, and the children’s museum will expand. We’ll arrange a walk-through beneath the building and common area, while the big pedestrian square in its front will become a part of the entrance.

We receive support from the board of overseers. Over the year, we have attracted new partners, and we keep on saying that everyone can support the museum. The new museum isn’t but a building in downtown Moscow: it’s a message to the future. What it will be like for us and our children, what our would would be like depends on all and everyone of us.

10 11

CONSTRUCTION

Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum

We’ve undergone the basic stages of the Polytechnic Museum

building’s renovation in 2016. We have equipped it with state-

of-the-art utilities and completed designing the complex

roofing over the Northern and the Southern courtyards.

We have also expanded the area for permanent exhibitions

by adding attic areas, as well as staff premises that had been so scarce

before. Now all historic buildings will be connected with four complex

engineering bridges running over the courtyard at the second story

level. There will be new passages between the Big Auditorium’s foyer

and the Northern courtyard’s balcony as well. On the rooftops of three

houses in the Southern courtyard we’ll open areas appropriate for

museum studies and recreation. We moved all passenger and service

elevators from the central part of the building to the courtyard space.

Preparing the building

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13 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum12

The museum’s historic facades are being renovated with a jeweller’s

meticulousness. The city will have them fully preserved. In the early

20th century, most of the ground floor was occupied by private stores

with a separate entry for each of them. For that reason, the owners

installed doors in big stained window openings. We carefully saved all

the doors, gates and window panes. Some of them, however, will be purely

decorative. There will also be a public pedestrian area incorporating

the accommodated area around the museum and basement premises

of the building open to the general public. Beneath the basement,

at the depth of 8.5 meters, we will furnish a new utility space.

Facades

We will renovate the museum’s most recognizable auditorium to

bring it back to the way it looked in the early 20th century, back

when the building was erected. We open yje structures, study

the details, and clean the decorations. The skylight over the

auditorium will go back to its original state whereas its structure

will be reinforced with modern technological solutions.

The big auditorium

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The Northern courtyard will host multimedia equipment. From now

on, we’ll be able to screen movies, and hold exhibitions, lectures

and concerts for more people than the Big Auditorium can house.

The Northern Courtyard

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In 2016, we have arranged two server rooms, which are the heart and

the brain of the museum’s technical equipment. We have purchased

the principal network devices, mounted servers, data storage systems

and backup solutions. The system that would underlie the Polytechnic

Museum is fairly unique for Russia’s museum environment. It’s designed

for modern museum’s needs of tomorrow where visitors actively

consume ‘heavy-weight’ content like 4K videos, 360˚ panoramas,

and video / audio streaming. Those solutions are mainly responsible

for the museum systems’ general reliability, so we’ve factored in a

great deal of safety strength. The system shall work for years to

come. Additionally, we’ve installed storage equipment. Our partner

Panasonic uses special optical Archival Disks with over a hundred

years of lifetime for cold archives. For further safety, the servers are

located in two different rooms on the opposite ends of the building.

Server rooms What the renovation unveiled

Over the course of renovation operations, we have discovered

a framework for a three-level skylight that illuminated the Big

Auditorium with natural light. Now we plan to reinforce and glass

the skylight. Inside the museum, there are four kinds of skylights

that were used for natural illumination of basement premises back

in the 19th century. They installed alternating prisms and semi-

spheres in a cast iron frame to refract the light and send it deep in

the room. Under several layers of flooring, we have found fragments

of the museum’s historical star-clad parquet. However, we couldn’t

save it because of its extremely poor condition. In older days,

there were stores along both sides of the Trade Passage, while its

central part was illuminated through a glass partition. The entire

height of the passage was split into two levels and covered with

a regular roofing after the revolution. Now we restore the glass

roofing and the decorations. We have already restored massive

brick-clad portals that bring back character to our passage.

18 � Политехнический�музей Annual Report 201619

PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS

20 21

PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS

The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016

In 2016, we have been actively recruiting a team to produce the

Polytech’s permanent exhibition, which is unique and completely

different from anything one can see in the world’s museums and science

centers. With the help of the world’s leading scientists and two chief

curators for science and art we have shaped the concepts of thematic

halls of the exhibition and proceeded with pre-production procedures.

In order to make the exhibition real we will have to produce

over 200 complex exhibits with no counterparts in the world, as well

as enormous amounts of multimedia and interactive content. The

exhibition’s prime purpose is to make contemporary fundamental science

comprehensible for any visitor. We have done a big job to pinpoint the

most important scientific topics of today in order to determine what to

show in the museum’s physical space and what to leave for a visitor’s

individual research in our app Big Museum. Even though the museum’s

effective space has grown by third, the dimensions of the historic building

still impose some limits, so we have put effort and time, and invited expert

opinion to find out which science areas are likely to bring about important

discoveries within the next five to ten years, and which make a person’s

understanding of their place in the world impossible without them.

In 2016, we also found reliable partners and

contractors who could share our mission and, most importantly,

accept this enormous challenge of speaking simply about

contemporary science without simplifying it. We are creating

the permanent exhibition from the scratch, and it won’t be like

a ‘classic’ conventional exhibition of the Polytechnic Museum.

Permanent exhibition

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22 23

PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS


The table of antiques(archaic and obsolete models of an atom)

Atomicnucleusstructure

The layoutof an atom

Propertiesof quarks

Charge

E=mc2

The LargeHadron Collider

An assemblingof the world

Real-world applicationsof quantum laws

The void andthe firmness

The StandardModel. Profile

The StandardModel. Table

of interactions

The StandardModel. Art-object

The Standard Model.Feynman Diagrams

The contemporarymodel of an atom

The world you knowis made of atoms

Laws of thesubatomicworld

The spatial distributionof the probability ofdetection of an electron

Atomicelectrontransitions

Void or ZeroPoint Energy

Fundamentalforces

Matter, the section about structure of the world at the most fundamental level

24 25

PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS


We retain the old school spirit in the Hall of Fame. It was first

conceived in 2016: the Hall’s main purpose, which is basically

similar to the new museum’s prime mission, is to provide an

objective glance at the Russian history of science and technology.

Spacecrafts, icebreaker ships, heating radiators — the

projects developed by Russian engineers and scientists that one

can’t imagine today’s civilization without. The Hall of Fame will

be a home to both well-known achievements of Russian scientists

like the periodic table and those not widely known to the general

public like cast iron San-Galli radiator that we have been using

ever since. Our goal is to tell as many people as possible about all

them, and to show the objective contribution of Russian researchers

in the global science and the reality we’re living in. The Hall

is our homage and tribute to the great scientists of Russia.

The Hall of Fame

26 27

PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS


Our goal is to establish the city’s main library for science and

technology, and to make it the basic methodological center

for Russia’s museum libraries. When the reading rooms open

their doors in the historic building, it will be a unique library

with unique infrastructure. We’re modernizing the repository

to make it automatic with an efficient search system. It would

be pretty easy to find any book on science and technology.

The library will closely interact with other

subdivisions of the museum to select books for attendees

of science labs and compile recommendations. The books

will be provided in both paper and electronic forms.

The library will have a separate entrance from the

Lubianski drive. The halls it occupies used to host the Library of the

Imperial Society for Natural Sciences, Anthropology and Ethnography

that had been found back in 1864 by the scientists of said society.

The Library

"In 2016, the library’s concept was developed, and the strategy of making it a part of the museum was proposed. So, it’s not a mere secondary division within a museum as it usually happens, but also a a part of the main exhibition that speaks about things important and necessary in the history of science.

For instance, the library will speak about the work of a scientist, about the scientific method. It says that scientists aren’t people that sit under an apple tree waiting for an apple to fall in order to come up with a new law. A scientist’s work is a systematic toll which includes studying the discoveries of earlier generations, books, and scientific articles. We deem it extremely important to show it in the library space.

The library will be incorporated in the main museum. It was the library’s staff who came up with this approach which seems absolutely unique to me".

Boris Kupriyanov Russian publisher, essay writer, the member of the Polytechnic Museum’s expert council

28 29

PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS


In 2016, we created the interface for the Big Museum platform so

that museum employees and visitors could interact with it. We’ve

laid the foundation for the system, found the basic architectural

solutions for the software, and struck a deal with Yandex as

to which server technologies we’ll be using, and how. We also

built interactions with other subdivisions of the museum.

The Big Museum is designed for museum visitors willing

to expand their knowledge of a certain area, as well as for users

visiting the museum in the privacy of their homes. However, the

platform’s capabilities are much wider than that: in fact, we’re

about to create an inter-museum medium which other museums will

hopefully join, while the professional museum community could

use it to expand the conceptual space of their exhibitions to help

visitors comprehend the complex picture of scientific knowledge.

The Big Museum

"We realize we’re creating a system that has no analogues neither in Russia, nor elsewhere in the world. The year 2016 was more about laying a foundation, though we can surely see the outlines of the building yet to be erected on this foundation".

Konstantin Chernozatonski The Big Museumproject curator

Energy

for life

Photosynthesis

Artificial Photosynthesis

ADP and ATP

oxygenic and anoxygenic photosynthesis

Non-chlorophyll and chlorophyll photosynthesis Chlorophyll

Photochemical reactions of photosynthesis

СВЕТВАЯ И ТЕМНОВАЯ ФАЗЫ ФОТОСИНТЕЗА

Cellular

organization of

living organisms

Cell

Genetic Information

Cell division

Cell specialization

Chromosome

Cell mutation

Apoptosis

DNA

Dynamic processes in cell

Genetic

engineering

Gene Transfer Between Species

Genetically modified organisms with the desired properties

Constructing recombinant DNA molecules in vitro

Gene therapy

Virotherapy

Genetic engineering in economics and medicine

Fluorescent

proteins,

microscopy

Twenty literal text of the amino acid sequence

Mutant protein (prion)

nuclear DNA

mitochondrial DNA

Central dogma of

molecular biology,

Genetic code

DNA

RNA

Amino acids

Protein

Nucleotides

Transcription, Translation

Telomerase enzyme

Genes

Gene code

Triplet gene code vs. Doublet vs. Single

Asymmetry of living matter

Messenger RNA

Biological

evolution

Natural selection

Gene regulation

Mitochondria and chloroplasts

The origins of multicellular organisms

Repeated hybridization

Repeated origin

Structure and function of proteins

Cell

technology

Cell specialization

Cloning

Cellular technologies in medicine

Stem cells

Multicellular

community

intercellular interactions

intercellular signals

gametes and somatic cells

Cell differentiation

Occurrence of multicellularity

obligate and facultative multicellularity

clonal and aggregate multicellularity

Stasis

ontogenesis

3D structures

of proteins

Proteins: structures and functions

Ligand

Signal molecules and their interfaces

3D structure of photosynthetic reaction center

Structure of structural proteins

X-ray crystallography

Nuclear magnetic resonance

Cryo-electron microscopy

Amino acid sequence

Eukaryotic transcription

Transmembrane channels

Enzymes Crystallization of enzymes

Enzyme

catalysis

The lock and key model

Catalysis

Enzyme polypeptide chain

ATP

Allosteric transition

Types of enzymes

The induced fit model

How do cells cooperate?

How are cells studied?

What is the mechanism of catalysis?

How do cells specialise? How and why do cells use energy?

What do cells live on?

Self-assembly of the first molecules

Artificial evolutionThe origin of life

on Earth

Panspermia

Biomolecules

Evolution

Abiogenic Origin of Life

heterotrophs

two branches of life

формамидные системы

Autotrophic origin of life

Induced pluripotent stem cells

Undifferentiated state of stem cells De-differentiation of differentiated stem cells

The biological

development and

signal transduction

Signal cascades

Malformations

Stem cells

Organogenesis

How can the genetic code change?

How and why do cells die?

How do cells multiply?

What did evolution start from?

What do replication errors lead to?

How are cells with certain properties created?

30 31

PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS


We’re giving the Southern courtyard to children of up to 9 years old.

The courtyard’s exterior will become a giant Study of Wonder, an

educational interactive platform referencing the image of Renaissance-

era cabinets of wonder hosting weird, rare and exotic objects on

the same shelf. The space, however, isn’t static like its classic

wunderkamer peer but dynamic and diverse, and offers numerous

scenarios of interaction that allow children meet exhibits of different

sizes, styles and value. The installation allows for frequent changes

of exhibition concepts and testing various educational formats.

The wings have 6 to 7 zones each of which is

artistically designed as a space for art and learning. All zones

and areas of the Southern courtyard will be thematically

connected to serve the common goal of helping children grasp

and strengthen the most important skills of a researcher

or an experimentalist: observation, imagination, curiosity,

and the ability to think logically and artistically.

The Children’s museum

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2016 PROJECTS

36 37

2016 PROJECTS


Polytech, the festival of science, arts and technology, has once

again brought children and adults together for 48 hours of an

endless sci-fe marathon at the Industrial Square of the VDNH.

There have been over 30 thousand visitors: even a driving rain

couldn’t scare them away. Inclusive programs played a prominent

role in the festival: we’ve made special excursions for the Khabenski

Foundation, the Fragile People Foundation and other charities.

Polytech Festival


"It was very important for us to amaze and inspire the visitors to study the science, to start asking questions, to begin understanding how the world is organized. This year new projects comprised ninety per cent of the program. We were selecting and preparing the content ourselves discarding everything we deemed uninteresting. The result was unusual and cool. Not because we’re too much of smart pants, but just because we have different priorities. That we had less science and more art in the end was also a great result".

Ivan Bogantsev festival director

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42 43

2016 PROJECTS


44 45

2016 PROJECTS


In 2016, the Polytech’s Lecture Hall hosted over 120 lectures with over

4,000 people attending overall. The hall has prepared educational programs

for the museum’s main exhibitions, and held several lecture cycles.

The educational program for Cosmos: Birth of the

New Age was dedicated to the issues directly related to space

exploration: economic justification of colonization of Mars, private

astronautics, space politics, and Russia’s priorities in space

research. There was a special program for children as well.

Exhibition 200 Keystrokes per Minute featured an

interdisciplinary program which incorporated lectures on typewriters’

history in culture and science (Tatiana Chernigovskaya, neurolinguist;

Denis Boyarinov, journalist; etc.) and poetry readings (poets

Sergei Gandlevski, Timur Kibirov, Anatoli Naiman, etc.)

In cooperation with the Prime Russian Magazine we held

a series of lectures titled Ideas and Entities dedicated to three

topics of the magazine’s issues: Earth, Youth, and Barbarianism.

Giving their lectures were psychologist Anna Varga, language

expert Kirill Babayev, and architect Maxim Atayants.

The series of lectures Enlightener, which was a joint project

of the Polytechnic Museum and the Enlightener Awards, featured

winners and runner-ups of the awards — authors of the best popular

science books of 2015: biologist Alexander Markov, astronomer

Vladimir Surdin, anthropologist Alexei Yurchak, among others.

The cycle Limits of the Humane focused on the way technologies

change our consciousness and bodies. Can we heal old age? How are new

organs made? What are the recent breakthroughs in cancer treatment?

In October 2016, famous professor of anaesthesiology and

psychology Stewart Hameroff gave a lecture Is Quantum Physics

Necessary to Understand the Phenomenon of Consciousness.

The Lecture Hall

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46 47

2016 PROJECTS


In 2016, the Polytechnic Museum’s open funds have held 363 excursions,

and serviced two school excursion groups a day during the summer

break as part of I Am Museum Expert program. There were 5,412 people

attending the funds overall. Among the most noticeable events were

How the Technical Progress Sounds that featured a unique concert

where the most unexpected technical items were used as musical

instruments, and I Wrote You Dots and Lines, I Called You where

schoolchildren could work with real items from the museum’s collection,

and even try their hand at being telephone station employees.

Scientific activity did not cease: there were 506 new

items inducted to the funds, including documents from archives

Yuri Denisiuk (the inventor of holographic recording in 3D light-

sensitive media); extremely rare ID card of Russo-Balt K12/20

car owner; and a valuable collection of geodetic devices.

The Polytech’s collection at Tekstilschiki

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48 49

2016 PROJECTS


On April 22nd, we came up with a special program in the Polytechnic

Library as part of the Library Night. Visitors could explore the

library’s mazes, and even read the world’s first graphic thesis

with the help of our experts. It was presented by the author, the

American scientist, artist, and visual communication expert Nick

Suzanis who wrote and upheld the world’s only thesis completely

written in the form of a graphic novel. Guests could give a closer

look at the work, experiment with their perception of graphic

content, and participate in creating a collaborative graphic novel.

The Library Night

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2016 PROJECTS


In 2016, over 600 classes attended lessons at the Science Labs with 1,200

students working in the study groups. The year featured numerous one-time

lessons on weekends; the first-time lessons on geography and forensics;

preparatory classes for the unified state examination on chemistry; special

course Kitchen Chemistry; and some courses for adults. The Math Lab

held a series of seminars for Moscow teachers that featured demonstrations

of equipment and methods applicable in their work with students.

The Science Labs have also held over 20 lessons titled

Just a Regular New Year’s Eve at Proxima B for a thousand kids.

The lessons that combined a theatrical production and practical

exercises on biology, chemistry, physics and math were there to

highlight the year’s most important scientific discoveries.

Aside from that, over the year the Labs held open doors days

featuring free-of-charge lessons on all directions; a trial day for lessons

developed for future labs in the historic building; and the Emancipation

Day on March 8th when laboratory chiefs invited nearly 100 girls to

participate in welding, laser cutting, and microcircuit designing.

In 2016, the physics lab welcomed its new chief, engineer,

TV host, and sciencetainment shows director Alexei Ivanchenko, who

conceived a series of lessons and courses exclusively for the Science Labs.

Meanwhile in the Science Labs

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54 55

2016 PROJECTS


The Polytechnic Museum’s SKVT program seeks to spark the interest for

museum affairs in teenagers. In 2016, the third convocation of participants

was mustered. Over the year, the SKVT participants acted as event

curators, moderators and intermediaries, and held interactive excursions,

surveys, round tables, and gave lectures. They have organized a public

program as part of Ecosystem of Excesses project, and learned the ropes of

curatorship and management. They promoted their events themselves, and

got acquainted with members of other youth initiatives of the city. They

met museum professionals from Garage and Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, as

well as renowned directors, art experts, historians, and teachers. In addition

to that, they have developed a thematic quest for the exhibition The World

of Impressions and Impressions of the the World: Dr. Zhivago’s Journeys

held at the Pushkin Museum venue together with the Museum’s curators.

Museum for the SKVT people is both a place to put

their own ideas and new knowledge to practice and a venue for

informal communication. The SKVT’s poetic program still lives:

over two and a half years, there have been over fifty people in

the studio. Together with discussing their own works, the SKVT

program also includes lectures by modern-day writers and poets, and

participation in other museums’ work. First of all, it’s the Polytechnic

Museum’s events: the annual springtime festival, exhibition, or the

newspaper. Thus, in 2016 we wrote lyrics for Scriptum the robot,

and competed with neural networks in the Polytech newspaper.

SKVT

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56 57

2016 PROJECTS


Our Children’s University is where children meet modern science.

In 2016, there were 2,230 students aged 7 to 14. They have their

lessons on Sundays at auditoriums of our partner universities and

some unusual field venues. This year, they had lessons at the Shirshov

Institute for Oceanology, the Puchkov Emergency Station, the Botkin

Hospital, the zoo, and the meteorological observatory of the MSU.

Scientists, university professors and leading experts in natural

science, liberal arts, and formal, social and technical studies give

their lectures and workshops. In this year alone, we cooperated with

152 scientists with 270 unique lesson scenarios for different areas.

Our students attended lectures by the great scientists

of today: molecular biologist Konstantin Severinov; language

expert and anthropologist Galina Yershova; neuroeconomist Vasily

Klucharev; language expert Fedor Uspenski; philosopher and

culture expert Vitaly Kurennoi; linguist Gasan Guseinov; rights

advocate Vyacheslav Bakhmin; astronomer Dmitri Vibe; cinema

expert Vsevolod Korshunov; and historian Igor Fedukin.

Many remember our Selfie Day aligned with the global

museum practice. That day, every lecture, discussion or a lesson

kicked off with a collective selfie. Over the day, one could make

a selfie with historic items from the Polytech’s funds.

In 2016, we participated in numerous festivals including

Geek Picnic, VK Fest, and Anton is Out There in St. Petersburg.

At the Intellectual Non-fiction Literature Fair in Moscow, we

presented the Children University’s top list of books for readers

of 7 to 14 years old with recommendations from scientists.

The Children’s University

A le

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phy

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st Y

uri M

ikha

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Fly

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il Ka

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n

58 59

2016 PROJECTS


It’s been the sixth science and technology film festival that the Polytech

has held, and in 2016 it has finally become a significant movie event

with more than 20 motion pictures in the competitive program, an

enormous discussion program, meet-ups with directors, lectures, and

workshops. For the first time, we have developed a standalone program

for children and showed two films that children of 5 years of age

and older may watch: the tickets were sold in a blink of an eye.

Opening the festival was O, Internet, the latest work by the

great documentary director Verner Herzog presented by him personally.

As for the parallel program of the festival, the most

noticeable event was a bug tasting session at the Danilovski market,

and a special insect dinner at Delicatessen: both events were bound

to the movie Bugs about amazing experimenter chefs of Noma,

a Danish gastrolab. The film’s protagonists brought the bugs to

Moscow from Mexico. Commenting the results of what they do was

Ilia Kolmanovski, the biology lab chief at the Polytechnic Museum.

360° Film Festival

The

open

ing

cere

mon

y of

the

Sixt

h Sc

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d Te

chno

logy

Fes

tival

360

at K

ARO

, Oct

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11t

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"All films presented this year at the festival was way more artistic than traditional hour-long BBC or HBO documentaries. Objectively speaking, the festival’s agenda this year was at a high level. Those prize-harvesting films that might interest not just geeks or young postgraduates attract urban youth as well. The festival opened with the latest feature by Verner Herzog, and that was big".

Kirill Sorokin The festival’s art director

Priz

es fo

r 360

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64 65

2016 PROJECTS


The museum’s publishing house was active as well. We’re released How

Everything Works — Making Physics Out of the Ordinary by Virginia

University professor Louis A. Bloomfield together with Corpus Publishing

and Dmitri Zimin’s Book Projects. The book was a hit, and the first

run was sold over just two weeks. We also brought the professor to

Moscow: he spoke at the Non-Fiction Fair, gave two lectures at ZIL and

DI Telegraph, and had numerous interviews. His visit was a main part

of the museum’s traditional involvement in the fair. At the Polytech’s

booth we’ve shown the museum’s work and educational programs.

The list of other books published under the museum’s

auspices includes Helaine Becker’s Science Loose; James Gleick’s

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood; and Florence Pinot’s

and Carina Lorent’s Meet the Math. We also released a popular

science work by Vladimir Ginzbirg and Kira Romashko on Herman

von Helmholtz; a terrific catalogue for our exhibition 200 Keystrokes

per Minute; collected works on the history of technology and museum

affairs; the Polytechnic Museum’s Report on the Future; and calendar

Evolution of Notions as Presented by Remarkable Dates of Science

and Exhibits of the Polytechnic Museum. For experts, we’ve published

methodological recommendations Guidelines for Museum Visitor Research,

and the second issue of Book Signs in the Polytechnic Museum’s

Collection catalogue on bookplates, owner insignia and stamps.

The publishingprogram

66 67

2016 PROJECTS


In 2016, we quadrupled the number of volunteers as compared to the last

year. There were 453 people to fill in the volunteer’s questionnaire at

the museum’s website, and 253 of them signed a contract for gratuitous

volunteering. In average, each volunteer has worked for 25 hours at

the museum, while the most proactive ones worked for over 100 hours.

In addition, we came up with and launched an inter-museum project

Sputnik, which was a personalized card entitling the owner to attend

eleven partner museums for free. Volunteers participated in all major

events of the museums; worked at temporary exhibitions; helped tutors

give and prepare lessons at the Science Labs; and held 23 New Year’s

Eve parties. Their field of action has expanded this year: a small group

of volunteers participated in planning the exhibition for the Cosmos

museum. The most intense days for volunteers are the Polytech Festival

and 360. This year, there were around 180 volunteers at the Polytech

festival. For the whole year, we kept on training the volunteers, held

training sessions and parties for them, and gave valuable prizes. Four most

proactive volunteers have become full-time employees at the museum.

Museum volunteers

The

mus

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’s v

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the

2016

Pol

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"Volunteering at the Polytech was an opportunity to gain practical experience in museum affairs. When they offered me to participate in creating the exhibition for the Cosmos museum, I realized it was my long-awaited chance to finally take the matter in hand. Certainly, I was very happy when they offered me internship at the museum afterwards".

Oxana Klescherova editor, museum volunteer

70 71

2016 PROJECTS


There have been over 2,000 publications in the media in 2016. More

than six million social network users saw the Polytechnic Museum’s

news, with over 235 million people covered by the museum’s advertising.

Many popular resources like Kultura TV, Meduza, THNGS, The

Question and Arzamas have partnered the museum in 2016 to become

platforms presenting its activities. The formats include tests, games,

digital collections, and Q&A sessions with museum experts.

Media Projects

The Polytechnic Museum72 Annual Report 201673

Exhibitions at our partners’ venues

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2016 PROJECTS


The most important event for the museum this year was Cosmos: Birth of

the New Age, an exhibition and a breath-taking story of how it took Russia

just a few decades to evolve from avant-garde drawings, Tsiolkovski’s

formulas, and Sergei Korolev’s experiments to the first artificial satellites,

spaceships and exploration probes sent to remote planets. The project was

implemented in cooperation with London’s Museum of Science, the VDNH,

and ROSIZO. The exhibition featured unique items like original landing

modules of Vostok-6 and Voskhod-1, personal belongings of Korolev and

Gagarin, spacesuits of the first cosmonauts, a model of Lunokhod, and

rare archive papers. Some items earlier stored in closed institutions were

exhibited for the first time ever. Preparing the exhibition was a vast

international team including a curator from London’s Museum of Science.

Initially the project was developed for London’s Museum

of Science. After the exhibition’s triumph in 2015 and 2016,

the curators considered bringing the exhibits to the owners,

however, a long negotiation with the Polytechnic Museum and

the VDNH resulted in bringing the exhibition to Moscow.

The Polytechnic Museum and London’s Museum of

Science have a history of friendship, and that’s the reason why

our museum had the honor of presenting the project at the

Central Pavilion of the VDNH. Attending the exhibition were

over 70 thousand people, and the project was a boom.

Cosmos:Birth of the New Age

Exhi

bits

from

the

colle

ctio

n of

the

Poly

tech

nic

Mus

eum

and

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olev

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Entr

ance

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e of

Cos

mos

: Bir

th o

f the

New

Age


78 79

2016 PROJECTS




Aer

osta

t of t

he in

terp

lane

tary

sta

tion

Vega

: a c

onta

iner

and

a c

over

(Pol

ytec

hnic

Mus

eum

col

lect

ion)

Aut

omat

ic la

bora

tory

of L

unok

hod-

1: c

olle

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n of

Lav

ochk

in S

PO F

SUE

Exhi

bits

from

The

Firs

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ans

on th

e O

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hall

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2016 PROJECTS


Earth Lab is a major multimedia project and the first fruit of the strategic

partnership with the Austria-based center ARS Electronica. It was created

in cooperation with SilaSveta studio, and under the auspices of the

Austrian Culture Forum in Moscow. The exhibition’s basic concept was

successfully implemented in Bilbao in 2013 as part of Artists as Catalysts

project. The Moscow version featured new works by Ars Electronica

awardees of 2013 to 2015 that reflect the new look at the interaction

between artistic consciousness and scientific thinking and technologies.

Red October space was the exhibition’s venue. It proved

to be a major step forward in building partnership relations with

the biggest contemporary art center of Russia and the country’s

most prominent science artists. In addition to that, an intense

parallel program featuring lectures, workshops, artist meet-ups,

performances, concerts and video screenings was held. The exhibition

received massive media coverage both in Russia and abroad.

Earth Lab

Ars

Reco

llect

ions

by

Mar

ek S

tras

zak

(frag

men

t)A

eria

l Jou

rney

by

Urs

ula

Neu

geba

uer


84 85

2016 PROJECTS



86 87

2016 PROJECTS


The interdisciplinary exhibition 200 Keystrokes per Minute: Typewriters

and the Consciousness of the 20th century held at the Moscow Museum

of Modern Art proved to be one of the most unusual and widely discussed

projects of the year. The exhibition was prepared by the Polytechnic

Museum, the MMMA, and the Museum of Literature. The project was

conceived and curated by Anna Narinskaya, literature critic and reviewer

for Kommersant. The exhibition based on objects from the Polytechnic

Museum’s collection considered typewriter as a phenomenon in different

cultural and historic contexts. 200 Keystrokes went beyond just being

an exhibition of typewriters to become a story of typewriting, typewriter

art, and the ‘art about typewriting.’ In fact, it told the history of the

20th century through the history of an item that recently seemed

irreplaceable. Accompanying the exhibition was a massive parallel program

developed by renowned culture actors like architect Alexander Brodsky

or composer Alexei Aigi. Even the catalogue has become a noticeable

cultural artefact. Over 30 thousand people attended the exhibition.

200 Keystrokesper Minute

Type

wri

ters

in th

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rs H

all



Exhi

bitio

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at th

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tion

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Exhi

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"The peculiarities of our culture and history, the literature-centricity and the experience of censorship and attempts to overcome it, they all have established a cult of typewriter here. Everybody certainly loves it, if only because it’s a really beautiful thing, but nobody ever admires it the way we do it. It’s not a household item, it’s an instrument that shaped culture of an entire century".

Anna Narinskaya Literature critic, curator of200 Keystrokes per Minute

90

2016 PROJECTS


Exhibitionsin Pavilion 26 at the VDNH

92 93

2016 PROJECTS


The project exhibiting the winning works of the annual Wellcome Image

Awards on scientific and medical photographs along with historical items

from the museum’s funds has attracted nearly a thousand people to the

Polytech’s VDNH pavilion. Later on, we’ve demonstrated the exhibition in

the Museon park where it was attended by nearly 350 000 visitors of the

park. Thanks to the partnership with Wellcome Trust Fund since 2016,

the exhibition will go to Arkhangelsk, Krasnoyarsk and Khanty-Mansiysk.

Living under the Microscope

Cur

ator

-led

excu

rsio

ns fo

r vol

unte

ers

The

exhi

bitio

n w

as s

uppl

emen

ted

by it

ems

from

the

Poly

tech

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Mus

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etro

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of m

icro

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nd m

acro

phot

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phy

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es)

Exhibitions in Pavilion 26 at the VDNH

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2016 PROJECTS


It’s not the first time that we work with Mexico’s most famous

artist Tania Candiani. This time, the Polytech presented her solo

interactive exhibition of reconstructed musical instruments and sound-

reproducing equipment. The exhibition also went to Nizhni Novgorod.

Codes. Sounds. Signs

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orie

s, o

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andi

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inst

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2016 PROJECTS



98 99

2016 PROJECTS


The Aegean Sea: the Birth of the Archipelago depicts the history of

the Aegean sea as seen by archaeologists, vulcanologists, mineralogists

and palæontologists. The exhibition was developed by the Museum

of Lesbos Petrified Wood History and the Polytechnic Museum with

the financial support from the Northern Aegean islands and the Greek

National Tourism Organizations, and under the auspices of Greece’s

Ministry for Culture and Sport, and Greece’s Ministry of Tourism.

At this date, 2,807 people have attended the exhibition, including

the visitors of the museum’s educational and excursion projects.

The AEgean Sea: the Birth of the Archipelago

Petr

ified

Nis

siop

i tre

e tr

unk

20 m

illio

n ye

ars

old

(low

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ne)

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the

Birt

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Arc

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VD

NH



Partners

We’re happy to cooperate with different institutions. The list of the Polytech’s partners includes international organizations,IT companies, art studios, embassies, venues, foundations,and universities.


Partners

The Polytechnic Museum104

The project developed by the team of the Polytechnic Museum

Edited by:Alexey Munipov Anna KachurovskayaAlexandra Kheyfets

Principal layout, Metteur en pages: Maxim VolkhinAndrey Ilyaskin Vladislav Borisov Photos courtesy of: The Polytechnic Museum Daniil Bayushev Maxim Emelyanov et al.

Architecture renders: Wowhaus bureau

Print run 500 copiesSize 165 × 240Offset printing

Printed at «UP PRINT» www.up-print.ru

The Polytechnic Museum Annual RepoRt 2016

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