Provincial Curator

What it is

Provincial Curator (Провинциальный куратор) is the Telegram channel of Ilya Shipilovskikh, an exhibition curator. The channel bio says he used to direct the gallery at the Yeltsin Center and was a senior researcher at the Ural branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts. The tagline translates roughly as "Putting something on show is a whole science", and that sets the tone: this is someone who has hung exhibitions for years, so he looks not only at the art but at the building, the hang and the reason it's all there.

Posts are short and nearly always come with photos. The author travels a lot, and lately the channel reads like a diary of gallery trips around Germany: Dortmund, Krefeld, Bonn, Gelsenkirchen. Everything is in Russian.

Why we picked it

We liked that the art is never separated from the place. One post is about the Zollern colliery near Dortmund and its 19-metre marble control panel; the author explains that in 1904 it became the first mine where the main hoist switched from steam to electricity. Another covers two neighbouring villas in Krefeld designed by Mies van der Rohe and now used as exhibition halls, with a show by the collective Slavs and Tatars and decorative work by the Die Brücke expressionists.

There's plenty of straight contemporary art too: Chim↑Pom's "Super Rat" at the Asia Pop exhibition, with the story of the Tokyo collective catching wild rats in Shibuya; a Jörg Immendorff show; a visit to Yuri Albert's studio that ended with "two mugs of tea over conversation". After the opening of the "Nie wieder" (Never Again) exhibition in Bonn he writes about Gerhard Richter's "Uncle Rudi".

The voice is calm and personal. You won't find press releases rewritten here; each post is something he saw himself and thought worth showing. There are detours, too, like a video about a New York Knicks centre who turns out to be an art lover — basketball and art, the author admits, are his two passions.

Where to start

• Scroll back a couple of weeks. Posts are short, so ten minutes gets you a route through several museums.
• Find the Zollern colliery post; it shows how he ties together architecture, engineering and history.
• Read the note on the Mies van der Rohe villas in Krefeld — it's a ready-made trip idea.
• Look for the studio visits; that's where the most vivid details are.
• If you put on shows yourself, watch for his remarks on hanging and space.

Who it's for

Contemporary art fans who are tired of feeds full of announcements. Art history students and people working in museums and galleries. Travellers in Europe who want more than the big museums and enjoy exhibition spaces in former industrial buildings. You'll need Russian or a translator; the channel is small and intimate, with a few posts a week.

Quick answers

Who runs it? Curator Ilya Shipilovskikh; the bio lists him as former director of the Yeltsin Center gallery and a former senior researcher at the Ural branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts.

What does it cover? Contemporary art exhibitions, artists' studios and the places where art is shown — lately mostly in Germany.

How often does it post? A few times a week, usually short notes with photos.