The VTB Arena Park with the Dynamo Stadium reconstruction project and the State Museum of Architecture named after A. V. Schusev have agreed to cooperate in organizing and holding an exhibition titled “Architecture of Football Stadiums. From Avant-Guard to Modern Times”. The exhibition is scheduled for May-August 2018 to coincide with the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. The exhibition is planned to be located in the front enfilade of the Museum main building, where the Dynamo Stadium exposition is to occupy one entire room.
According to the Museum Director Elizaveta Likhacheva, “the Dynamo reconstruction project is a unique experience of turning a purely sportive facility into a multi-functional center that has no comparable analogues in Russia and Europe, where a football stadium is neighboring a basketball/hockey/concert arena, shopping center and an underground parking. I am sure that the history of the legendary 90-year-old stadium, its past, present and future will touch the feelings of our visitors.”
“It is a high honor for us to work together with the State Museum of Architecture named after A. V. Schusev, the most respectable center for research and popularization of our cultural and historic legacy,” noted Olga Myagkikh, Managing Director of Arena Park Events, the company focused on promotion and development of the VTB Arena Park project. “We want that our favorite Dynamo stadium, which is going to celebrate its 90th anniversary this year in a reconstructed state, to be presented to as many people as possible including Moscow citizens, visitors, football fans gathering to the 2018 FIFA World Cup. I believe that the Museum visitors will be especially excited to find out that we have completed a unique restauration of the stadium bas-reliefs. These bas-reliefs, created by an outstanding sculptor Sergey Merkurov, had been decorating the façades of the Northern and Southern Tribunes. From now on, their place in the façade niches will be occupied by fiber-concrete copies, while the restored originals will become a dominant exposition of the 1500-suare-meter art space inside the Sports and Concert/Entertainment Complex “VTB Arena – Central Stadium “Dynamo” named after Lev Yashin”.
Apart from the Dynamo Stadium, the exhibition will also present 11 other Russian stadiums which are to host the upcoming matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.