News outlets are reporting that Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art was raided by police on Friday.
Law enforcement officers conducted a surprise search at Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, targeting the museum’s archive building in Gorky Park and the Narkomfin building on Novinsky Boulevard. Reports suggest the searches lasted approximately two hours.
While the reasons behind the searches were not immediately clear, there were indications that officers may have been searching for “LGBTQ+ literature” allegedly hidden in the museum’s archives.
Witnesses described officers arriving in unmarked cars, questioning senior managers, and entering the museum’s office building with up to 20 officers holding staff on the third floor.
Despite the disruption, Garage Museum employees asserted that the museum was operating normally and denied any knowledge of the searches. Founded by Roman Abramovich and Dasha Zhukova in 2008, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art paused its exhibition program during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
