The project, curated by Daria Tishkova, continued the first part of the program, "Field of Impressions," which took place at the festival in Moscow on June 20.
At the "Island of Impressions," conventional amusement rides gave way to attractions of attention and unexpected encounters with art. The space brought together leading cultural institutions fr om St. Petersburg, which visitors could discover in an unusual format: through play, exploration, and creativity.
Yulia Grozovskaya, Director of Strategic Communications at the Vladimir Potanin Foundation:
'Island of Impressions' at the Picnic is an attempt to show just how diverse and fascinating the museum world is. Every museum has its own language, its own themes, and its own way of communicating with visitors. For the Foundation, it is important to create an environment in which institutions can exchange experience, listen to one another, and experiment with new formats for engaging with audiences.
We are not seeking to simplify culture. On the contrary, it is important for us to broaden access to the personal experience of encountering it. Through play, exploration, and curiosity, a personal encounter can emerge and develop into a deeper interest in a museum, its collection, and the meanings it conveys.
We are grateful to the museums that embraced this somewhat adventurous proposal to venture beyond their familiar walls and meet audiences in a park setting at a music festival. Museums are a natural part of urban life, and without them the celebration would have been incomplete."
The museums presented their projects in two conceptual pavilions: "Attraction of Attention" and "Attraction of Memory.
Daria Tishkova, Curator, Artist, and Art Producer:
The festival space itself encourages experimentation, encounters between different cultural languages, and unexpected discoveries. The metaphor of an amusement ride was prompted by the theme of Afisha Picnic, which was dedicated to the amusement park. At first, combining it with museums seemed almost paradoxical. But then I realized that a museum is itself an attraction — simply of a different kind. It immerses us in contemplation, prompts reflection, and allows a person to experience an encounter with art, history, and themselves.
If museums were once often perceived as temples, today they are becoming places wh ere people can find their own point of reference. A museum retains a special sense of eternity, but it is not a static eternity. A museum shows how the same human questions change over time while simultaneously remaining with us.
That is why the word 'impressions' is so important here. Behind it lies complex and often invisible museum work: creating an experience that is not only vivid but also profound, capable of reminding us what makes us human.
"Attraction of Attention" Pavilion
Museum of Nonconformist Art
Founded by independent artists in 1998, the museum is based at the iconic Pushkinskaya-10 Art Centre — a space where the legacy of unofficial artists meets contemporary art.
At the festival, the museum opened a portal into the mysterious "Paralleloshar." At the heart of the program was "Life in Paralleloshar," an original line of souvenirs created in partnership with the Prostye Veshchi (Simple Things) design studio with support fr om the Foundation. Festival participants discovered the museum's collection at a pop-up exhibition, tried to find their own language for discussing contemporary art during art mediation sessions, created zine catalogues of imaginary museums, and asked curators questions about museum practices, the boundaries of interpretation, and the accessibility of contemporary art. The program culminated in the "Sound of Paintings" silent disco, transforming an encounter with art into an experiment with sound and perception.
State Museum of Sport
In prehistoric society, sport as we know it today did not yet exist, but everyday life itself was already a form of training. Hunting, overcoming obstacles, and the need to escape danger developed strength, speed, agility, endurance, and balance. Over time, survival practices evolved into games and competitions.
At the "Island of Impressions," festival guests could try "Paleofitness," a system of natural movements inspired by the lifestyle of prehistoric humans. Game-based activities allowed participants to test their strength, agility, coordination, and balance and experience how our distant ancestors moved. Objects for the project were created from recycled plastic by the St. Petersburg-based designers Eburet.
"Paleofitness" is featured in the exhibition "Rules of the Game: How Sport Shaped Culture," opened by the State Museum of Sport jointly with the Vladimir Potanin Foundation at the museum's St. Petersburg branch.
ROSPHOTO State Museum and Exhibition Centre
ROSPHOTO's multimedia exhibition "Inventing Colour" explored the emergence and development of colour photography: scientific experiments of the 19th and 20th centuries, the first colour photographs, and slides and negatives that emerged in the mid-1930s. Visitors also discovered other unique techniques, including stereoscopic photography — a precursor to the first 3D images.
At the "Island of Impressions," guests watched slide films and viewed an exhibition of contemporary artists, as well as creating their own slides and trying to assemble models of the iconic Lubitel and Smena cameras.
Russian Museum of Ethnography
"Culture of Movement" is a large-scale project at the intersection of sport and culture implemented by the Russian Museum of Ethnography with support from the Vladimir Potanin Foundation as part of the Power of Sport program. The project's key event was the "Culture of Movement" exhibition and its extensive accompanying program, including sports and cultural events and activities for children. At the festival, the museum presented some of the most interesting findings from the exhibition and the research that preceded it.
"Attraction of Memory" Pavilion
Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines
The museum brought an exhibition dedicated to the traditional Russian game Gorodki to the festival. Visitors could learn the rules of the game, discover why Gorodki was loved by everyone from peasants to Leo Tolstoy, and trace how a courtyard game became part of the Soviet Spartakiad before inspiring an arcade machine of the same name.
One such arcade machine is held in the museum's collection. It has no foreign prototypes. Its pixel graphics, moving figures, and music were inspired by its historical context, while "Kalinka-Malinka" plays between rounds.
Visitors could bring cultural memory to life while also discovering why Gorodki was once called a "girls' game" and how this particular machine was found in an abandoned Young Pioneer camp.
State Museum of the History of Religion
At the festival, the museum presented the project "Who Is Shaking the Trees?", created with support from the Foundation. This audio tour-performance is built around children's philosophical questions — about human beings and their place in the world, life, and death — and is designed for just two people: visitors become the main characters, while museum exhibits become their interlocutors.
At the "Island of Impressions," guests turned to the "Philosophical Oracle" with children's questions about the things that matter most, tried to express complex ideas through collage in the "Laboratory of Meanings," and visited the "Shelter of Forgotten Questions" to remember wh ere their own sense of wonder at the world began.
OBERIU Museum
The exhibition invited visitors into a very strange apartment. At the "Island of Impressions," guests told fortunes using library cards, read poetry, dressed up, and took photographs as the eccentrics and experimenters of the last century. In this way, festival participants could experience the atmosphere of the mysterious apartment on Syezzhinskaya Street — the OBERIU Museum — a place preserving the memory of Kharms, Vvedensky, Oleynikov, and other remarkable OBERIU poets.
Tsarskoye Selo State Museum and Heritage Site
"Palace in Bloom" is a creative experiment by the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum and Heritage Site involving fresh flowers in historic interiors. In 2023–2024, the team of floral designer Maxim Languev worked with museum staff to create floral arrangements for the Alexander Palace inspired by its interiors, collections, and stories of the family of Nicholas II. Each bouquet became a statement in its own right and a way of using the language of flowers to create a dialogue between past and present.
At the "Island of Impressions," museum staff spoke about the history of the project and its sources of inspiration and held creative workshops. "Palace in Bloom" received support from the Foundation through the "Creative Museum" competition and became part of Tsarskoye Selo's new museum strategy for engaging with the creative industries.
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