St Petersburg Russian Museum to open branch in Spain

St Petersburg’s State Russian Museum will open a new site — its first outside Russia — in the southern Spanish city of Málaga in early 2015, with over 100 works from some of Russia’s best-known artists to be sent from St Petersburg. The new space, housed in a former tobacco factory built in the 1920s, will display a range of works running from 15th-century icons to 20th-century Constructivism, with star artists like Wassily Kandinsky and Isaac Levitan going on show alongside temporary exhibitions.

A ten-year agreement was signed yesterday in St Petersburg between the mayor of Málaga, Francisco de la Torre, the director of the Fundación Picasso Museo Casa Natal, José María Luna, and representatives of the Russian Museum. This is the first of a number of new projects initiated by Málaga’s council to strengthen the city’s cultural pulling power: Paris’s Centre Pompidou will also open a new site in the city next year.