Visual Arts

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, with 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, says in an interview, sipping a cappuccino in the top-floor cafe of the Tate Modern in London. "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.

When Ms. Zhukova first saw the building, she wasn't searching for an art space or anything else in particular. The landmark structure, which is government-owned, had been leased to the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia. Through perseverance she was able to take over the lease and then hire Jamie Fobert, a London architect, to transform it.

It was a powerful reflection of her deep pockets. Ms. Zhukova is the daughter of an oligarch, Alexander Zhukov, a deputy prime minister who lives in Moscow and made his fortune in oil. And there is help at the ready from her companion, the 41-year-old financier Roman Abramovich, who has riveted the art world recently by paying top dollar for works by Francis Bacon, Giacometti and others. (Forbes this year estimated his net worth at $23.5 billion.)

Little wonder, then, that in late spring, when word got out that Ms. Zhukova had decided to throw a June 12 dinner party in the bowels of the former bus garage, dealers and collectors around the globe began maneuvering for invitations.

Leaving the space bare except for a giant chandelier-style light installation by the artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, she invited some 300 people to what she called a "soft opening." A caterer was flown in from London, and Amy Winehouse was hired to sing. Among those milling about were young European aristocrats such as Charlotte Casiraghi, daughter of Princess Caroline of Monaco; New York collectors including the cosmetics heir Ronald S. Lauder and the hedge-fund manager Steven A. Cohen; powerful New York dealers such as Larry Gagosian; and artists such as Jeff Koons.

"It took chutzpah for Dasha to put on an event and attract so many people," says Oliver Barker, head of contemporary art at Sotheby's in London. "It shows how seriously they're taking her."

Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, a former director of the Gagosian Gallery in London who has been hired to help plan the Garage Center, says that she and Ms. Zhukova sought out artists as guests so they could "listen to their response."

"Ultimately we want this to be a place where artists will want to show their work," she says.

Ms. Zhukova is not yet a collector, but her newfound love of art has influenced Mr. Abramovich's collecting. There are long precedents for Russians collecting Western art. Peter the Great frequented the salesrooms of Amsterdam, Netherlands, scooping up 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings; Catherine the Great's tastes were voracious and included Titian, Poussin and French silver. Around the turn of the 20th century, Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov collected some of the greatest impressionist paintings directly from the artists' studios and, later, assembled troves of Matisses and Picassos.

"It's history repeating itself," Mr. Barker says.

Carol Vogel

The New York Times

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