annualreportthe polytechnic museum2016
Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum2 3
CONTENTS
10 Preparing the building11 Facades13 The Big Auditorium14 The Northern courtyard16 Server rooms17 What the renovation
unveiled
20 Permanent exhibition24 The Hall of Fame26 Library28 The Big Museum30 Children’s Museum
36 The Polytech Festival44 Lecture Hall46 The Polytech collection
at Tekstilschiki48 The Library Night50 Meanwhile in the scientific labs54 SKVT56 The Children’s University58 360° Film Festival64 The publishing program66 Museum volunteers70 Media Projects73 Exhibitions at our partners’
venues74 Cosmos: Birth of New Age82 Earth Lab86 200 Keystrokes per Minute91 Exhibitions in Pavilion 26
at the VDNH92 Living under the Microscope94 Codes. Sounds. Signs98 The AEgean Sea: the Birth of the Archipelago
4 NUMBERS
9 CONSTRUCTION 19 PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS 35 2016 PROJECTS 101 PARTNERS
Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum4 5
The lecture hallThe library
Scientific labs The Polytech Festival 360° Festival
12 489 people over the year 1 400 sessions
33 000+ people over two days
7 000+ attendees
3 217 people over the year119 lectures6 368 people over the year
unique visitors of the Polytechnic Museum’swebsite
subscribers of theMuseum’s newsletter
NUMBERS
64 304visitors of the Polytechnic Museum’s enlightening projects
748 092
29 500
The Children’s University
Scientific Battles
2 230 students over the year830 sessions
2 147 people in the audience8 battles in Norilsk, Zapolarny,Nizhni Novgorod, Tomsk and Minsk
Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum6 7
2016 2017
37 017 11 473
29 301 118 031
3568
350 000
January JanuaryFebruary March April May June July August September October November DecemberDecember
2016 2017
Alice in the Scienceland (at Ufa)
Alice in the Scienceland (at Orsk)
200 keystrokes per minute (at the MMOA)
Cosmos: Birth of the New Age (at the VDNH)
Life under the Microscope(at Museon)
Earth Lab (at Digital October)
605 576people have attended the Polytechnic Museum’s exhibitions in 2016
Russia Does Itself was attended by 71 239 people with 663 excursions overall
5 412 people have visited the open funds with 364 excursions overall
visitors
visitors
visitors
visitors
visitors
visitors
8 � Политехнический�музей 9 Annual Report 2016
The ConstructionThe year 2016 has become the year of the historical building’s global renovation and the final inception of the exhibition’s concept. Dozens of Russia’s top scientists, artists, architects and curators are working to create a new museum. We will dedicate the next year to translating their ideas into the real items of the exhibition. Now we’re entering the final phase of creating the new Polytechnic museum. The world’s best museum of science.
We renovate and preserve the historical building while completely rethinking the inner space. Nearly the entire building will be open for visitors. There will be more labs, exhibition areas, and the children’s museum will expand. We’ll arrange a walk-through beneath the building and common area, while the big pedestrian square in its front will become a part of the entrance.
We receive support from the board of overseers. Over the year, we have attracted new partners, and we keep on saying that everyone can support the museum. The new museum isn’t but a building in downtown Moscow: it’s a message to the future. What it will be like for us and our children, what our would would be like depends on all and everyone of us.
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CONSTRUCTION
Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum
We’ve undergone the basic stages of the Polytechnic Museum
building’s renovation in 2016. We have equipped it with state-
of-the-art utilities and completed designing the complex
roofing over the Northern and the Southern courtyards.
We have also expanded the area for permanent exhibitions
by adding attic areas, as well as staff premises that had been so scarce
before. Now all historic buildings will be connected with four complex
engineering bridges running over the courtyard at the second story
level. There will be new passages between the Big Auditorium’s foyer
and the Northern courtyard’s balcony as well. On the rooftops of three
houses in the Southern courtyard we’ll open areas appropriate for
museum studies and recreation. We moved all passenger and service
elevators from the central part of the building to the courtyard space.
Preparing the building
Pain
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13 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum12
The museum’s historic facades are being renovated with a jeweller’s
meticulousness. The city will have them fully preserved. In the early
20th century, most of the ground floor was occupied by private stores
with a separate entry for each of them. For that reason, the owners
installed doors in big stained window openings. We carefully saved all
the doors, gates and window panes. Some of them, however, will be purely
decorative. There will also be a public pedestrian area incorporating
the accommodated area around the museum and basement premises
of the building open to the general public. Beneath the basement,
at the depth of 8.5 meters, we will furnish a new utility space.
Facades
We will renovate the museum’s most recognizable auditorium to
bring it back to the way it looked in the early 20th century, back
when the building was erected. We open yje structures, study
the details, and clean the decorations. The skylight over the
auditorium will go back to its original state whereas its structure
will be reinforced with modern technological solutions.
The big auditorium
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15 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum14
The
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Aud
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The Northern courtyard will host multimedia equipment. From now
on, we’ll be able to screen movies, and hold exhibitions, lectures
and concerts for more people than the Big Auditorium can house.
The Northern Courtyard
A p
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17 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum16
In 2016, we have arranged two server rooms, which are the heart and
the brain of the museum’s technical equipment. We have purchased
the principal network devices, mounted servers, data storage systems
and backup solutions. The system that would underlie the Polytechnic
Museum is fairly unique for Russia’s museum environment. It’s designed
for modern museum’s needs of tomorrow where visitors actively
consume ‘heavy-weight’ content like 4K videos, 360˚ panoramas,
and video / audio streaming. Those solutions are mainly responsible
for the museum systems’ general reliability, so we’ve factored in a
great deal of safety strength. The system shall work for years to
come. Additionally, we’ve installed storage equipment. Our partner
Panasonic uses special optical Archival Disks with over a hundred
years of lifetime for cold archives. For further safety, the servers are
located in two different rooms on the opposite ends of the building.
Server rooms What the renovation unveiled
Over the course of renovation operations, we have discovered
a framework for a three-level skylight that illuminated the Big
Auditorium with natural light. Now we plan to reinforce and glass
the skylight. Inside the museum, there are four kinds of skylights
that were used for natural illumination of basement premises back
in the 19th century. They installed alternating prisms and semi-
spheres in a cast iron frame to refract the light and send it deep in
the room. Under several layers of flooring, we have found fragments
of the museum’s historical star-clad parquet. However, we couldn’t
save it because of its extremely poor condition. In older days,
there were stores along both sides of the Trade Passage, while its
central part was illuminated through a glass partition. The entire
height of the passage was split into two levels and covered with
a regular roofing after the revolution. Now we restore the glass
roofing and the decorations. We have already restored massive
brick-clad portals that bring back character to our passage.
18 � Политехнический�музей Annual Report 201619
PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS
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PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
In 2016, we have been actively recruiting a team to produce the
Polytech’s permanent exhibition, which is unique and completely
different from anything one can see in the world’s museums and science
centers. With the help of the world’s leading scientists and two chief
curators for science and art we have shaped the concepts of thematic
halls of the exhibition and proceeded with pre-production procedures.
In order to make the exhibition real we will have to produce
over 200 complex exhibits with no counterparts in the world, as well
as enormous amounts of multimedia and interactive content. The
exhibition’s prime purpose is to make contemporary fundamental science
comprehensible for any visitor. We have done a big job to pinpoint the
most important scientific topics of today in order to determine what to
show in the museum’s physical space and what to leave for a visitor’s
individual research in our app Big Museum. Even though the museum’s
effective space has grown by third, the dimensions of the historic building
still impose some limits, so we have put effort and time, and invited expert
opinion to find out which science areas are likely to bring about important
discoveries within the next five to ten years, and which make a person’s
understanding of their place in the world impossible without them.
In 2016, we also found reliable partners and
contractors who could share our mission and, most importantly,
accept this enormous challenge of speaking simply about
contemporary science without simplifying it. We are creating
the permanent exhibition from the scratch, and it won’t be like
a ‘classic’ conventional exhibition of the Polytechnic Museum.
Permanent exhibition
The
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PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
The table of antiques(archaic and obsolete models of an atom)
Atomicnucleusstructure
The layoutof an atom
Propertiesof quarks
Charge
E=mc2
The LargeHadron Collider
An assemblingof the world
Real-world applicationsof quantum laws
The void andthe firmness
The StandardModel. Profile
The StandardModel. Table
of interactions
The StandardModel. Art-object
The Standard Model.Feynman Diagrams
The contemporarymodel of an atom
The world you knowis made of atoms
Laws of thesubatomicworld
The spatial distributionof the probability ofdetection of an electron
Atomicelectrontransitions
Void or ZeroPoint Energy
Fundamentalforces
Matter, the section about structure of the world at the most fundamental level
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PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
We retain the old school spirit in the Hall of Fame. It was first
conceived in 2016: the Hall’s main purpose, which is basically
similar to the new museum’s prime mission, is to provide an
objective glance at the Russian history of science and technology.
Spacecrafts, icebreaker ships, heating radiators — the
projects developed by Russian engineers and scientists that one
can’t imagine today’s civilization without. The Hall of Fame will
be a home to both well-known achievements of Russian scientists
like the periodic table and those not widely known to the general
public like cast iron San-Galli radiator that we have been using
ever since. Our goal is to tell as many people as possible about all
them, and to show the objective contribution of Russian researchers
in the global science and the reality we’re living in. The Hall
is our homage and tribute to the great scientists of Russia.
The Hall of Fame
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PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
Our goal is to establish the city’s main library for science and
technology, and to make it the basic methodological center
for Russia’s museum libraries. When the reading rooms open
their doors in the historic building, it will be a unique library
with unique infrastructure. We’re modernizing the repository
to make it automatic with an efficient search system. It would
be pretty easy to find any book on science and technology.
The library will closely interact with other
subdivisions of the museum to select books for attendees
of science labs and compile recommendations. The books
will be provided in both paper and electronic forms.
The library will have a separate entrance from the
Lubianski drive. The halls it occupies used to host the Library of the
Imperial Society for Natural Sciences, Anthropology and Ethnography
that had been found back in 1864 by the scientists of said society.
The Library
"In 2016, the library’s concept was developed, and the strategy of making it a part of the museum was proposed. So, it’s not a mere secondary division within a museum as it usually happens, but also a a part of the main exhibition that speaks about things important and necessary in the history of science.
For instance, the library will speak about the work of a scientist, about the scientific method. It says that scientists aren’t people that sit under an apple tree waiting for an apple to fall in order to come up with a new law. A scientist’s work is a systematic toll which includes studying the discoveries of earlier generations, books, and scientific articles. We deem it extremely important to show it in the library space.
The library will be incorporated in the main museum. It was the library’s staff who came up with this approach which seems absolutely unique to me".
Boris Kupriyanov Russian publisher, essay writer, the member of the Polytechnic Museum’s expert council
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PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
In 2016, we created the interface for the Big Museum platform so
that museum employees and visitors could interact with it. We’ve
laid the foundation for the system, found the basic architectural
solutions for the software, and struck a deal with Yandex as
to which server technologies we’ll be using, and how. We also
built interactions with other subdivisions of the museum.
The Big Museum is designed for museum visitors willing
to expand their knowledge of a certain area, as well as for users
visiting the museum in the privacy of their homes. However, the
platform’s capabilities are much wider than that: in fact, we’re
about to create an inter-museum medium which other museums will
hopefully join, while the professional museum community could
use it to expand the conceptual space of their exhibitions to help
visitors comprehend the complex picture of scientific knowledge.
The Big Museum
"We realize we’re creating a system that has no analogues neither in Russia, nor elsewhere in the world. The year 2016 was more about laying a foundation, though we can surely see the outlines of the building yet to be erected on this foundation".
Konstantin Chernozatonski The Big Museumproject curator
Energy
for life
Photosynthesis
Artificial Photosynthesis
ADP and ATP
oxygenic and anoxygenic photosynthesis
Non-chlorophyll and chlorophyll photosynthesis Chlorophyll
Photochemical reactions of photosynthesis
СВЕТВАЯ И ТЕМНОВАЯ ФАЗЫ ФОТОСИНТЕЗА
Cellular
organization of
living organisms
Cell
Genetic Information
Cell division
Cell specialization
Chromosome
Cell mutation
Apoptosis
DNA
Dynamic processes in cell
Genetic
engineering
Gene Transfer Between Species
Genetically modified organisms with the desired properties
Constructing recombinant DNA molecules in vitro
Gene therapy
Virotherapy
Genetic engineering in economics and medicine
Fluorescent
proteins,
microscopy
Twenty literal text of the amino acid sequence
Mutant protein (prion)
nuclear DNA
mitochondrial DNA
Central dogma of
molecular biology,
Genetic code
DNA
RNA
Amino acids
Protein
Nucleotides
Transcription, Translation
Telomerase enzyme
Genes
Gene code
Triplet gene code vs. Doublet vs. Single
Asymmetry of living matter
Messenger RNA
Biological
evolution
Natural selection
Gene regulation
Mitochondria and chloroplasts
The origins of multicellular organisms
Repeated hybridization
Repeated origin
Structure and function of proteins
Cell
technology
Cell specialization
Cloning
Cellular technologies in medicine
Stem cells
Multicellular
community
intercellular interactions
intercellular signals
gametes and somatic cells
Cell differentiation
Occurrence of multicellularity
obligate and facultative multicellularity
clonal and aggregate multicellularity
Stasis
ontogenesis
3D structures
of proteins
Proteins: structures and functions
Ligand
Signal molecules and their interfaces
3D structure of photosynthetic reaction center
Structure of structural proteins
X-ray crystallography
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Cryo-electron microscopy
Amino acid sequence
Eukaryotic transcription
Transmembrane channels
Enzymes Crystallization of enzymes
Enzyme
catalysis
The lock and key model
Catalysis
Enzyme polypeptide chain
ATP
Allosteric transition
Types of enzymes
The induced fit model
How do cells cooperate?
How are cells studied?
What is the mechanism of catalysis?
How do cells specialise? How and why do cells use energy?
What do cells live on?
Self-assembly of the first molecules
Artificial evolutionThe origin of life
on Earth
Panspermia
Biomolecules
Evolution
Abiogenic Origin of Life
heterotrophs
two branches of life
формамидные системы
Autotrophic origin of life
Induced pluripotent stem cells
Undifferentiated state of stem cells De-differentiation of differentiated stem cells
The biological
development and
signal transduction
Signal cascades
Malformations
Stem cells
Organogenesis
How can the genetic code change?
How and why do cells die?
How do cells multiply?
What did evolution start from?
What do replication errors lead to?
How are cells with certain properties created?
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PROGRAMS & CONCEPTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
We’re giving the Southern courtyard to children of up to 9 years old.
The courtyard’s exterior will become a giant Study of Wonder, an
educational interactive platform referencing the image of Renaissance-
era cabinets of wonder hosting weird, rare and exotic objects on
the same shelf. The space, however, isn’t static like its classic
wunderkamer peer but dynamic and diverse, and offers numerous
scenarios of interaction that allow children meet exhibits of different
sizes, styles and value. The installation allows for frequent changes
of exhibition concepts and testing various educational formats.
The wings have 6 to 7 zones each of which is
artistically designed as a space for art and learning. All zones
and areas of the Southern courtyard will be thematically
connected to serve the common goal of helping children grasp
and strengthen the most important skills of a researcher
or an experimentalist: observation, imagination, curiosity,
and the ability to think logically and artistically.
The Children’s museum
The
Sout
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33 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum32
Elev
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34 � Политехнический�музей Annual Report 201635
2016 PROJECTS
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2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
Polytech, the festival of science, arts and technology, has once
again brought children and adults together for 48 hours of an
endless sci-fe marathon at the Industrial Square of the VDNH.
There have been over 30 thousand visitors: even a driving rain
couldn’t scare them away. Inclusive programs played a prominent
role in the festival: we’ve made special excursions for the Khabenski
Foundation, the Fragile People Foundation and other charities.
Polytech Festival
39 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum38
41 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum40
"It was very important for us to amaze and inspire the visitors to study the science, to start asking questions, to begin understanding how the world is organized. This year new projects comprised ninety per cent of the program. We were selecting and preparing the content ourselves discarding everything we deemed uninteresting. The result was unusual and cool. Not because we’re too much of smart pants, but just because we have different priorities. That we had less science and more art in the end was also a great result".
Ivan Bogantsev festival director
Gal
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s pa
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la: a
kin
etic
obj
ect d
emon
stra
ting
Gal
ileo’
s id
eas
of m
otio
n
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2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
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2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
In 2016, the Polytech’s Lecture Hall hosted over 120 lectures with over
4,000 people attending overall. The hall has prepared educational programs
for the museum’s main exhibitions, and held several lecture cycles.
The educational program for Cosmos: Birth of the
New Age was dedicated to the issues directly related to space
exploration: economic justification of colonization of Mars, private
astronautics, space politics, and Russia’s priorities in space
research. There was a special program for children as well.
Exhibition 200 Keystrokes per Minute featured an
interdisciplinary program which incorporated lectures on typewriters’
history in culture and science (Tatiana Chernigovskaya, neurolinguist;
Denis Boyarinov, journalist; etc.) and poetry readings (poets
Sergei Gandlevski, Timur Kibirov, Anatoli Naiman, etc.)
In cooperation with the Prime Russian Magazine we held
a series of lectures titled Ideas and Entities dedicated to three
topics of the magazine’s issues: Earth, Youth, and Barbarianism.
Giving their lectures were psychologist Anna Varga, language
expert Kirill Babayev, and architect Maxim Atayants.
The series of lectures Enlightener, which was a joint project
of the Polytechnic Museum and the Enlightener Awards, featured
winners and runner-ups of the awards — authors of the best popular
science books of 2015: biologist Alexander Markov, astronomer
Vladimir Surdin, anthropologist Alexei Yurchak, among others.
The cycle Limits of the Humane focused on the way technologies
change our consciousness and bodies. Can we heal old age? How are new
organs made? What are the recent breakthroughs in cancer treatment?
In October 2016, famous professor of anaesthesiology and
psychology Stewart Hameroff gave a lecture Is Quantum Physics
Necessary to Understand the Phenomenon of Consciousness.
The Lecture Hall
Lew
is B
lum
field
’s le
ctur
e H
ow E
very
thin
g W
orks
: Law
s of
Phy
sics
in O
ur L
ives
Vlad
imir
Sur
din’
s le
ctur
e Jo
urne
y fr
om K
alug
a to
the
Moo
n
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2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
In 2016, the Polytechnic Museum’s open funds have held 363 excursions,
and serviced two school excursion groups a day during the summer
break as part of I Am Museum Expert program. There were 5,412 people
attending the funds overall. Among the most noticeable events were
How the Technical Progress Sounds that featured a unique concert
where the most unexpected technical items were used as musical
instruments, and I Wrote You Dots and Lines, I Called You where
schoolchildren could work with real items from the museum’s collection,
and even try their hand at being telephone station employees.
Scientific activity did not cease: there were 506 new
items inducted to the funds, including documents from archives
Yuri Denisiuk (the inventor of holographic recording in 3D light-
sensitive media); extremely rare ID card of Russo-Balt K12/20
car owner; and a valuable collection of geodetic devices.
The Polytech’s collection at Tekstilschiki
TV c
amer
a (1
934)
: int
ende
d fo
r bla
ck a
nd w
hite
bro
adca
stin
g w
ith m
echa
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l sca
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om th
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t stu
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in M
osco
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echa
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set w
ith N
ipko
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: a ra
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t rec
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ng s
et E
ChS
-2, s
peak
er R
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d-4,
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et B
-2, h
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48 49
2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
On April 22nd, we came up with a special program in the Polytechnic
Library as part of the Library Night. Visitors could explore the
library’s mazes, and even read the world’s first graphic thesis
with the help of our experts. It was presented by the author, the
American scientist, artist, and visual communication expert Nick
Suzanis who wrote and upheld the world’s only thesis completely
written in the form of a graphic novel. Guests could give a closer
look at the work, experiment with their perception of graphic
content, and participate in creating a collaborative graphic novel.
The Library Night
The
wor
ld’s
firs
t gra
phic
thes
is b
y N
ick
Suza
nis
Excu
rsio
ns a
t the
Pol
ytec
hnic
libr
ary
duri
ng th
e Li
brar
y N
ight
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2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
In 2016, over 600 classes attended lessons at the Science Labs with 1,200
students working in the study groups. The year featured numerous one-time
lessons on weekends; the first-time lessons on geography and forensics;
preparatory classes for the unified state examination on chemistry; special
course Kitchen Chemistry; and some courses for adults. The Math Lab
held a series of seminars for Moscow teachers that featured demonstrations
of equipment and methods applicable in their work with students.
The Science Labs have also held over 20 lessons titled
Just a Regular New Year’s Eve at Proxima B for a thousand kids.
The lessons that combined a theatrical production and practical
exercises on biology, chemistry, physics and math were there to
highlight the year’s most important scientific discoveries.
Aside from that, over the year the Labs held open doors days
featuring free-of-charge lessons on all directions; a trial day for lessons
developed for future labs in the historic building; and the Emancipation
Day on March 8th when laboratory chiefs invited nearly 100 girls to
participate in welding, laser cutting, and microcircuit designing.
In 2016, the physics lab welcomed its new chief, engineer,
TV host, and sciencetainment shows director Alexei Ivanchenko, who
conceived a series of lessons and courses exclusively for the Science Labs.
Meanwhile in the Science Labs
Com
mem
orat
ion
XX, t
he in
tern
atio
nal w
omen
’s d
ay a
t the
Sci
ence
Lab
sTh
e N
ew Y
ear’s
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ty a
t the
Sci
ence
Lab
s
53 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum52
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2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
The Polytechnic Museum’s SKVT program seeks to spark the interest for
museum affairs in teenagers. In 2016, the third convocation of participants
was mustered. Over the year, the SKVT participants acted as event
curators, moderators and intermediaries, and held interactive excursions,
surveys, round tables, and gave lectures. They have organized a public
program as part of Ecosystem of Excesses project, and learned the ropes of
curatorship and management. They promoted their events themselves, and
got acquainted with members of other youth initiatives of the city. They
met museum professionals from Garage and Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, as
well as renowned directors, art experts, historians, and teachers. In addition
to that, they have developed a thematic quest for the exhibition The World
of Impressions and Impressions of the the World: Dr. Zhivago’s Journeys
held at the Pushkin Museum venue together with the Museum’s curators.
Museum for the SKVT people is both a place to put
their own ideas and new knowledge to practice and a venue for
informal communication. The SKVT’s poetic program still lives:
over two and a half years, there have been over fifty people in
the studio. Together with discussing their own works, the SKVT
program also includes lectures by modern-day writers and poets, and
participation in other museums’ work. First of all, it’s the Polytechnic
Museum’s events: the annual springtime festival, exhibition, or the
newspaper. Thus, in 2016 we wrote lyrics for Scriptum the robot,
and competed with neural networks in the Polytech newspaper.
SKVT
Poet
robo
t Scr
iptu
m: a
join
t pro
ject
of t
he S
KVT
and
Dut
ch a
rtis
t Gijs
van
Bon
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2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
Our Children’s University is where children meet modern science.
In 2016, there were 2,230 students aged 7 to 14. They have their
lessons on Sundays at auditoriums of our partner universities and
some unusual field venues. This year, they had lessons at the Shirshov
Institute for Oceanology, the Puchkov Emergency Station, the Botkin
Hospital, the zoo, and the meteorological observatory of the MSU.
Scientists, university professors and leading experts in natural
science, liberal arts, and formal, social and technical studies give
their lectures and workshops. In this year alone, we cooperated with
152 scientists with 270 unique lesson scenarios for different areas.
Our students attended lectures by the great scientists
of today: molecular biologist Konstantin Severinov; language
expert and anthropologist Galina Yershova; neuroeconomist Vasily
Klucharev; language expert Fedor Uspenski; philosopher and
culture expert Vitaly Kurennoi; linguist Gasan Guseinov; rights
advocate Vyacheslav Bakhmin; astronomer Dmitri Vibe; cinema
expert Vsevolod Korshunov; and historian Igor Fedukin.
Many remember our Selfie Day aligned with the global
museum practice. That day, every lecture, discussion or a lesson
kicked off with a collective selfie. Over the day, one could make
a selfie with historic items from the Polytech’s funds.
In 2016, we participated in numerous festivals including
Geek Picnic, VK Fest, and Anton is Out There in St. Petersburg.
At the Intellectual Non-fiction Literature Fair in Moscow, we
presented the Children University’s top list of books for readers
of 7 to 14 years old with recommendations from scientists.
The Children’s University
A le
ctur
e by
phy
sici
st Y
uri M
ikha
ilovs
ki a
t the
Chi
ldre
n’s
Uni
vers
itySc
ienc
e sh
ow W
hy D
o Bi
rds
Fly
by o
rnith
olog
ist M
ikha
il Ka
liaki
n
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2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
It’s been the sixth science and technology film festival that the Polytech
has held, and in 2016 it has finally become a significant movie event
with more than 20 motion pictures in the competitive program, an
enormous discussion program, meet-ups with directors, lectures, and
workshops. For the first time, we have developed a standalone program
for children and showed two films that children of 5 years of age
and older may watch: the tickets were sold in a blink of an eye.
Opening the festival was O, Internet, the latest work by the
great documentary director Verner Herzog presented by him personally.
As for the parallel program of the festival, the most
noticeable event was a bug tasting session at the Danilovski market,
and a special insect dinner at Delicatessen: both events were bound
to the movie Bugs about amazing experimenter chefs of Noma,
a Danish gastrolab. The film’s protagonists brought the bugs to
Moscow from Mexico. Commenting the results of what they do was
Ilia Kolmanovski, the biology lab chief at the Polytechnic Museum.
360° Film Festival
The
open
ing
cere
mon
y of
the
Sixt
h Sc
ienc
e an
d Te
chno
logy
Fes
tival
360
at K
ARO
, Oct
ober
11t
h
61 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum60
63 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum62
"All films presented this year at the festival was way more artistic than traditional hour-long BBC or HBO documentaries. Objectively speaking, the festival’s agenda this year was at a high level. Those prize-harvesting films that might interest not just geeks or young postgraduates attract urban youth as well. The festival opened with the latest feature by Verner Herzog, and that was big".
Kirill Sorokin The festival’s art director
Priz
es fo
r 360
o Fi
lm F
estiv
al fi
nalis
ts
64 65
2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
The museum’s publishing house was active as well. We’re released How
Everything Works — Making Physics Out of the Ordinary by Virginia
University professor Louis A. Bloomfield together with Corpus Publishing
and Dmitri Zimin’s Book Projects. The book was a hit, and the first
run was sold over just two weeks. We also brought the professor to
Moscow: he spoke at the Non-Fiction Fair, gave two lectures at ZIL and
DI Telegraph, and had numerous interviews. His visit was a main part
of the museum’s traditional involvement in the fair. At the Polytech’s
booth we’ve shown the museum’s work and educational programs.
The list of other books published under the museum’s
auspices includes Helaine Becker’s Science Loose; James Gleick’s
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood; and Florence Pinot’s
and Carina Lorent’s Meet the Math. We also released a popular
science work by Vladimir Ginzbirg and Kira Romashko on Herman
von Helmholtz; a terrific catalogue for our exhibition 200 Keystrokes
per Minute; collected works on the history of technology and museum
affairs; the Polytechnic Museum’s Report on the Future; and calendar
Evolution of Notions as Presented by Remarkable Dates of Science
and Exhibits of the Polytechnic Museum. For experts, we’ve published
methodological recommendations Guidelines for Museum Visitor Research,
and the second issue of Book Signs in the Polytechnic Museum’s
Collection catalogue on bookplates, owner insignia and stamps.
The publishingprogram
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2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
In 2016, we quadrupled the number of volunteers as compared to the last
year. There were 453 people to fill in the volunteer’s questionnaire at
the museum’s website, and 253 of them signed a contract for gratuitous
volunteering. In average, each volunteer has worked for 25 hours at
the museum, while the most proactive ones worked for over 100 hours.
In addition, we came up with and launched an inter-museum project
Sputnik, which was a personalized card entitling the owner to attend
eleven partner museums for free. Volunteers participated in all major
events of the museums; worked at temporary exhibitions; helped tutors
give and prepare lessons at the Science Labs; and held 23 New Year’s
Eve parties. Their field of action has expanded this year: a small group
of volunteers participated in planning the exhibition for the Cosmos
museum. The most intense days for volunteers are the Polytech Festival
and 360. This year, there were around 180 volunteers at the Polytech
festival. For the whole year, we kept on training the volunteers, held
training sessions and parties for them, and gave valuable prizes. Four most
proactive volunteers have become full-time employees at the museum.
Museum volunteers
The
mus
eum
’s v
olun
teer
s at
the
2016
Pol
ytec
h Fe
stiv
al
69 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum68
"Volunteering at the Polytech was an opportunity to gain practical experience in museum affairs. When they offered me to participate in creating the exhibition for the Cosmos museum, I realized it was my long-awaited chance to finally take the matter in hand. Certainly, I was very happy when they offered me internship at the museum afterwards".
Oxana Klescherova editor, museum volunteer
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2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
There have been over 2,000 publications in the media in 2016. More
than six million social network users saw the Polytechnic Museum’s
news, with over 235 million people covered by the museum’s advertising.
Many popular resources like Kultura TV, Meduza, THNGS, The
Question and Arzamas have partnered the museum in 2016 to become
platforms presenting its activities. The formats include tests, games,
digital collections, and Q&A sessions with museum experts.
Media Projects
The Polytechnic Museum72 Annual Report 201673
Exhibitions at our partners’ venues
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2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
The most important event for the museum this year was Cosmos: Birth of
the New Age, an exhibition and a breath-taking story of how it took Russia
just a few decades to evolve from avant-garde drawings, Tsiolkovski’s
formulas, and Sergei Korolev’s experiments to the first artificial satellites,
spaceships and exploration probes sent to remote planets. The project was
implemented in cooperation with London’s Museum of Science, the VDNH,
and ROSIZO. The exhibition featured unique items like original landing
modules of Vostok-6 and Voskhod-1, personal belongings of Korolev and
Gagarin, spacesuits of the first cosmonauts, a model of Lunokhod, and
rare archive papers. Some items earlier stored in closed institutions were
exhibited for the first time ever. Preparing the exhibition was a vast
international team including a curator from London’s Museum of Science.
Initially the project was developed for London’s Museum
of Science. After the exhibition’s triumph in 2015 and 2016,
the curators considered bringing the exhibits to the owners,
however, a long negotiation with the Polytechnic Museum and
the VDNH resulted in bringing the exhibition to Moscow.
The Polytechnic Museum and London’s Museum of
Science have a history of friendship, and that’s the reason why
our museum had the honor of presenting the project at the
Central Pavilion of the VDNH. Attending the exhibition were
over 70 thousand people, and the project was a boom.
Cosmos:Birth of the New Age
Exhi
bits
from
the
colle
ctio
n of
the
Poly
tech
nic
Mus
eum
and
Kor
olev
Ene
rgia
RKK
JSC
Entr
ance
zon
e of
Cos
mos
: Bir
th o
f the
New
Age
Exhibitions at our partners’ venues
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2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
Exhibitions at our partners’ venues
81 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum80
Aer
osta
t of t
he in
terp
lane
tary
sta
tion
Vega
: a c
onta
iner
and
a c
over
(Pol
ytec
hnic
Mus
eum
col
lect
ion)
Aut
omat
ic la
bora
tory
of L
unok
hod-
1: c
olle
ctio
n of
Lav
ochk
in S
PO F
SUE
Exhi
bits
from
The
Firs
t Hum
ans
on th
e O
rbit
hall
82 83
2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
Earth Lab is a major multimedia project and the first fruit of the strategic
partnership with the Austria-based center ARS Electronica. It was created
in cooperation with SilaSveta studio, and under the auspices of the
Austrian Culture Forum in Moscow. The exhibition’s basic concept was
successfully implemented in Bilbao in 2013 as part of Artists as Catalysts
project. The Moscow version featured new works by Ars Electronica
awardees of 2013 to 2015 that reflect the new look at the interaction
between artistic consciousness and scientific thinking and technologies.
Red October space was the exhibition’s venue. It proved
to be a major step forward in building partnership relations with
the biggest contemporary art center of Russia and the country’s
most prominent science artists. In addition to that, an intense
parallel program featuring lectures, workshops, artist meet-ups,
performances, concerts and video screenings was held. The exhibition
received massive media coverage both in Russia and abroad.
Earth Lab
Ars
Reco
llect
ions
by
Mar
ek S
tras
zak
(frag
men
t)A
eria
l Jou
rney
by
Urs
ula
Neu
geba
uer
Exhibitions at our partners’ venues
84 85
2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
Exhibitions at our partners’ venues
86 87
2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
The interdisciplinary exhibition 200 Keystrokes per Minute: Typewriters
and the Consciousness of the 20th century held at the Moscow Museum
of Modern Art proved to be one of the most unusual and widely discussed
projects of the year. The exhibition was prepared by the Polytechnic
Museum, the MMMA, and the Museum of Literature. The project was
conceived and curated by Anna Narinskaya, literature critic and reviewer
for Kommersant. The exhibition based on objects from the Polytechnic
Museum’s collection considered typewriter as a phenomenon in different
cultural and historic contexts. 200 Keystrokes went beyond just being
an exhibition of typewriters to become a story of typewriting, typewriter
art, and the ‘art about typewriting.’ In fact, it told the history of the
20th century through the history of an item that recently seemed
irreplaceable. Accompanying the exhibition was a massive parallel program
developed by renowned culture actors like architect Alexander Brodsky
or composer Alexei Aigi. Even the catalogue has become a noticeable
cultural artefact. Over 30 thousand people attended the exhibition.
200 Keystrokesper Minute
Type
wri
ters
in th
e W
rite
rs H
all
Exhibitions at our partners’ venues
89 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum88
Exhi
bitio
n cu
rato
r Ann
a N
arin
skay
a co
nduc
ts a
n ex
curs
ion
at th
e ex
hibi
tion
open
ing
Exhi
bits
ded
icat
ed to
typi
sts
and
thei
r liv
es
"The peculiarities of our culture and history, the literature-centricity and the experience of censorship and attempts to overcome it, they all have established a cult of typewriter here. Everybody certainly loves it, if only because it’s a really beautiful thing, but nobody ever admires it the way we do it. It’s not a household item, it’s an instrument that shaped culture of an entire century".
Anna Narinskaya Literature critic, curator of200 Keystrokes per Minute
90
2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 201691
Exhibitionsin Pavilion 26 at the VDNH
92 93
2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
The project exhibiting the winning works of the annual Wellcome Image
Awards on scientific and medical photographs along with historical items
from the museum’s funds has attracted nearly a thousand people to the
Polytech’s VDNH pavilion. Later on, we’ve demonstrated the exhibition in
the Museon park where it was attended by nearly 350 000 visitors of the
park. Thanks to the partnership with Wellcome Trust Fund since 2016,
the exhibition will go to Arkhangelsk, Krasnoyarsk and Khanty-Mansiysk.
Living under the Microscope
Cur
ator
-led
excu
rsio
ns fo
r vol
unte
ers
The
exhi
bitio
n w
as s
uppl
emen
ted
by it
ems
from
the
Poly
tech
nic
Mus
eum
’s c
olle
ctio
n(r
etro
spec
tive
of m
icro
scop
es a
nd m
acro
phot
ogra
phy
appl
ianc
es)
Exhibitions in Pavilion 26 at the VDNH
94 95
2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
It’s not the first time that we work with Mexico’s most famous
artist Tania Candiani. This time, the Polytech presented her solo
interactive exhibition of reconstructed musical instruments and sound-
reproducing equipment. The exhibition also went to Nizhni Novgorod.
Codes. Sounds. Signs
Soni
c St
orie
s, o
ne o
f Tan
ia C
andi
ani’s
inst
alla
tions
The
Poly
tech
’s R
odio
n D
amin
ov p
lays
Tan
ia C
andi
ani’s
org
an
Exhibitions in Pavilion 26 at the VDNH
96 97
2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
Exhibitions in Pavilion 26 at the VDNH
98 99
2016 PROJECTS
The Polytechnic Museum Annual Report 2016
The Aegean Sea: the Birth of the Archipelago depicts the history of
the Aegean sea as seen by archaeologists, vulcanologists, mineralogists
and palæontologists. The exhibition was developed by the Museum
of Lesbos Petrified Wood History and the Polytechnic Museum with
the financial support from the Northern Aegean islands and the Greek
National Tourism Organizations, and under the auspices of Greece’s
Ministry for Culture and Sport, and Greece’s Ministry of Tourism.
At this date, 2,807 people have attended the exhibition, including
the visitors of the museum’s educational and excursion projects.
The AEgean Sea: the Birth of the Archipelago
Petr
ified
Nis
siop
i tre
e tr
unk
20 m
illio
n ye
ars
old
(low
er m
ioce
ne)
The
Aeg
ean
Sea:
the
Birt
h of
the
Arc
hipe
lago
at t
he P
olyt
echn
ic M
useu
m a
t the
VD
NH
Exhibitions in Pavilion 26 at the VDNH
100 � Политехнический�музей Annual Report 2016101
Partners
We’re happy to cooperate with different institutions. The list of the Polytech’s partners includes international organizations,IT companies, art studios, embassies, venues, foundations,and universities.
103 Annual Report 2016The Polytechnic Museum102
Partners
The Polytechnic Museum104
The project developed by the team of the Polytechnic Museum
Edited by:Alexey Munipov Anna KachurovskayaAlexandra Kheyfets
Principal layout, Metteur en pages: Maxim VolkhinAndrey Ilyaskin Vladislav Borisov Photos courtesy of: The Polytechnic Museum Daniil Bayushev Maxim Emelyanov et al.
Architecture renders: Wowhaus bureau
Print run 500 copiesSize 165 × 240Offset printing
Printed at «UP PRINT» www.up-print.ru
The Polytechnic Museum Annual RepoRt 2016