What’s Happening: A spate of high-profile departures, canceled exhibitions, and anti-war protests have shrouded the once-promising Moscow museum GES-2 House of Culture in controversy that has come to symbolize how cultural sanctions are impacting Russia.

The Download: GES-2 House of Culture, a contemporary art museum located opposite the Kremlin, opened this past December to much fanfare and promise. Joining the Garage Museum and the Pushkin State Museum along Moscow’s Museum Mile, the highly anticipated institution was intended to mirror the Soviet “Houses of Culture” in the late 19th century that brought theaters, galleries, libraries, cinemas, and schools together under one roof. The project is the brainchild of Novatek gas magnate and oligarch Leonid Mikhelson’s nonprofit V-A-C Foundation, which aims to elevate Russian artists to the international sphere.

Mikhelson enlisted Italian architect Renzo Piano to transform a derelict power station into GES-2’s shiny new home and a vitalizing force for creative Muscovites. Conceptualized as a vibrant piazza open to all, the soaring 215,000-square-foot venue comprises a library, auditorium, design workshops, recording studios, and ample exhibition space. Four of the original building’s 230-foot-tall smokestacks were upgraded into royal blue chimneys that provide natural ventilation and clean air for an interior birch forest while reducing the building’s energy consumption and establishing itself as a neighborhood landmark.

Though GES-2 opened to acclaim and heralded an exciting addition to Moscow’s burgeoning presence in the contemporary art landscape, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two months later has dampened the early excitement. Since then, the institution has been beset by a controversial slew of high-profile resignations, canceled exhibitions, and anti-war protests that have come to symbolize how cultural sanctions are impacting Russia’s creative clout. The disarray began when museum co-founder Teresa Iarocci Mavica departed her director role two weeks after giving a widely publicized tour to Vladimir Putin. The Italian-born Mavica was transferred to V-A-C Zattere, the foundation’s space in a Venetian palazzo that opened in 2017 and overlooks the Canale della Giudecca.

It continued when Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson announced he would be halting performances of Santa Barbara—his recreation of the American soap opera that became wildly popular in Russia following the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991. Touted as the museum’s marquee attraction, the performance was supposed to kick off an ambitious five-season program until he swiftly pulled the plug and revealed his role in helping Pussy Riot’s Masha Alyokhina flee Russia to avoid persecution for her anti-Putin activism. Kjartansson reportedly convinced an unnamed European country to issue her a travel document that allowed her to seek refuge in Lithuania. “A lot of magic happened” that week, she told the New York Times. “It sounds like a spy novel.”

Two days after Santa Barbara unraveled, both GES-2 and V-A-C Zattere closed indefinitely; the latter has yet to reopen. Shortly after the 59th Venice Biennale kicked off in April, more than 100 Global Project protesters targeted V-A-C Zattere by hanging banners on its facade that read “Let’s expropriate Russian oligarchs for peace and climate justice.” In a statement, the group called out the European Union for not including Mikhelson among the Russian tycoons subject to sanctions—likely due to the region’s reliance on Russian gas.

Since the invasion, the museum has seen a revolving door of high-profile executives come and go. Mavica’s name was recently removed as a V-A-C co-founder on the foundation’s website, and she claims to have “no role” in either institution since GES-2’s opening. Francesco Manacorda, the V-A-C Foundation’s artistic director, resigned in March and was replaced by Ural Industrial Biennial commissioner Alisa Prudnikova as program director. Though the museum hasn’t listed current or future programming besides an Alexandra Sukhareva exhibition, it hosted a forum overseen by Putin called “Strong Ideas for a New Time” in July.

In Their Own Words: “We put a lot of effort into rethinking the opening program to help the local context, to reinject positive energy into the crisis that Covid had brought with it,” Mavica told The Art Newspaper when GES-2 opened. “Our intention is to open up this part of the city and make it permeable and dynamic by turning it into a place where all kinds of people want to be.”

Surface Says: What unfolded at GES-2 is hardly the worst of Russian institutions suffering blowback from the war. The Kremlin has been actively censoring theater directors, filmmakers, and musicians across the country, quashing any creative expression with Western influences to the point where anti-war criticism is outlawed.

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In 2019, Louis Vuitton asked six globally renowned artists to reimagine its coveted Capucine bag. Named after rue Neuve-de-Capucines, the Parisian street on which the French maison’s first boutique opened in 1854, the handbag lends itself well to such a challenge. Its trapezoidal build, clean lines, and calfskin leather construction easily doubles as a canvas, making it a no-brainer to let artists festoon the Capucine with their signature flair. It’s become a yearly tradition, with blue-chip names like Tschabalala Self, Urs Fischer, Alex Israel, Henry Taylor, and Jean-Michel Othoniel all participating in the annual commission.

This season’s group of creatives—Amélie Bertrand, Daniel Buren, Park Seo-Bo, Peter Marino, Ugo Rondinone, and Kennedy Yanko—is multifaceted and no less prestigious. Among the highlights is Yanko, who adapted her signature crumpled paint skins to stunning effect with, as she describes, “a rusting process that takes place using bacteria.” Marino’s studded Capucine, meanwhile, is a veritable reflection of his personal brand of head-to-toe black leather. Each limited to a run of 200, the $10,500 bags are available for purchase both online and in stores. Attendees of Paris+, the new fair helmed by the owners of Art Basel that debuted this weekend, enjoyed a retrospective in Louis Vuitton’s booth that presented this year’s crop of Artycapucines alongside their forebears.

If his Greenwich Village hotspot American Bar is any indication, Kyle Hotchkiss knows how to set a vibe. In this installment of Designing Delicious, we visit the Grand Tour Hospitality co-founder’s fashionable sister restaurant, Saint Theo’s, where his stateside gaze turns to Italy.

Since opening in 2021, the jewel-toned dining room has been a high-powered hive buzzing with Manhattan’s social set. With a focus that spans the disparate regions of Italy and a nostalgia-driven aesthetic orchestrated by renowned designer Martin Brudnizki, the restaurant channels the energy of Venice’s famed bacari bars. Crimson banquettes, an Italo pop soundtrack, and vintage ephemera such as Venice Biennale posters and Pirelli calendars transport diners to the City of Canals. In year two, a refreshed culinary program is propelling the momentum even further. Here, the new executive chef Diego Negri teases Saint Theo’s sophomore season.

Where: The Shed, New York

When: Oct. 26–Jan. 8

What: The Brazilian artist’s North American debut exhibition introduces his focus on Black identity, representation, and empowerment, featuring new paintings commissioned by The Shed to mark the occasion. Alexandre’s multi-disciplinary canvases—often painted on Kraft paper, referred to in Portuguese as “pardo”—create a rich portrait of his background with references to hip-hop and rap culture, icons of pop- and consumer culture, and the dynamics of Black identity in Brazil.

Few buildings in London are more storied than the Battersea Power Station. Commissioned in 1933, the hulking structure burnt coal and generated 20 percent of the city’s electricity, keeping the lights on in Buckingham Palace. It’s rumored that World War II pilots even used the thick plumes of smoke billowing from its four giant chimneys to guide them home in misty conditions. One of the world’s largest brick buildings, the power station was decommissioned in 1975 and has sat empty ever since. Its lavish Art Deco interior fittings, prominent site along the Thames, and pop culture appearances earned the structure Grade II status in 1980, saving it from demolition.

Since then, multiple developers have hatched ill-fated plans to reimagine Battersea as London’s next great entertainment amenity. First up was John Broome, who acquired the site in 1987 with plans to transform it into a theme park fitted out with rollercoasters, an aquarium, an ice rink, 4D cinemas, and a botanical garden. Costly renovations and a looming recession doomed it to failure. City planner Sir Terry Farrell proposed the structure be converted into the centerpiece of a sprawling park. Chelsea FC envisioned it as a 60,000-seat stadium. Battersea’s owners ultimately sold the site for $10 billion to a Malaysian consortium, who had other plans: thousands of condo units surrounding the red-brick behemoth, which would now house a mall and office space.

Cadence is on a mission to bring you calm and control, everywhere. The brand’s signature product, the Capsules, magnetically connect to create a personalized, leakproof system designed to maintain your routines—home and away. Made from a blend of recycled ocean-bound plastic and excess manufacturing material, the TSA-compliant Capsules are engineered to be easily refilled for a lifetime of use.

Surface Says: With thoughtful, sustainably driven design, Cadence delivers on the elusive promise to simplify a life lived on the go.

You can win a trip and private movie night at the world’s last Blockbuster.

Highsnobiety unearths the late Virgil Abloh’s very first Instagram posts.

Philip Buehler captures a dying New Jersey mall’s final stages of life.

Banksy’s ex is exhibiting some of the artist’s previously unseen works.