Photo: museums and exhibitions, parks and recreation, Museon Art Park, Moscow

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The Museon Art Park and its thousands of sculptures

Museums and Exhibitions • Parks and recreation

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The Museon Art Park founded in 1992 is considered to be the largest open-air sculpture museum in Russia: more than a thousand monuments are exhibited here. Most of them were dismantled and brought here after the collapse of the USSR.

In the Park one can find sculptures of Soviet leaders, monuments of the era of socialist realism and the works of sculptors-avant-gardists. Among the most famous is the monument by the sculptor Vuchetich to the founder of the NKVD Felix Dzerzhinsky popularly nicknamed "Iron Felix". Another colorful sculpture is the lifetime statue of Joseph Stalin from pink granite. The monument is notable for the fact that his nose and feet are split off. More modern sculptures are popular among Moscow residents, such as "Grandfather Mazay and the Hares" or "Don Quixote". All the sculptures are freely accessible on the lawns and park alleys, therefore anyone can approach, for example, the sculpture of the "Shoe" depicting a girl wearing her mother's huge shoes, and make a couple of funny pictures. After the Krymskaya embankment joining the Museon Art Park there was a bicycle rental, and after the reconstruction of a summer cinema a playground for music festivals, a cafe and three concert stages were opened. Here one can also gambol in the streams of the largest dry fountain in Moscow. It does not have the usual bowl of a fountain and the water hits directly from under the asphalt. It is very pleasant to run and refresh here in the hot weather. For several years the Museon Art Park has been hosting a spectacular "Festival of Walking Orchestras". Legendary brass bands from Moscow and abroad play literally on the move, walk rhythmically along the embankment and arrange stunning jam sessions.

The Museon Art Park and its thousands of sculptures

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