Museum Fest to celebrate global day, independence anniversary across Georgia

A 10-day festival of extraordinary exhibitions, public talks and educational events will celebrate International Museum Day in Georgia starting next week.

The Georgian National Museum Fest, bringing together celebrations for two dates, will host visitors at various GNM venues across the country starting May 15.

It will mark the global museum day along with the 100th anniversary of the First Democratic Republic of Georgia and involve the annual Night at the Museum program.

Photographs captured by award-winning German photojournalist Thomas Dworzak in celebration of 70 years of Robert Capa and John Steinbeck’s journey across the USSR. Photo: TBC Bank Facebook page.

Exhibitions hosted for the festival will include popular recent displays in Tbilisi like photographs of Paris by famed late photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and snapshots of two visual diaries by famed 20th century photographer Robert Capa and award-winning German photojournalist Thomas Dworzak.

Moments captured in the French capital by Cartier-Bresson, a co-founder of acclaimed collective Magnum Photos, later went on to become timeless.

Some his most recognised photographs include a 1969 image Boulevard Diderot and a 1954 photo of a woman crossing a street in the city.

A 1932 photo taken by Cartier-Bresson at the Gare Saint-Lazare railway station in Paris. Photo: Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos.

The showcase of photos by Capa and Dworzak highlights the former’s 1947 trip across the Soviet Union along with author John Steinbeck, and its 2017 reenactment by the Dworzak and British reporter Julius Strauss.

Capa and Steinbeck toured the Soviet cities and towns for six weeks, travelling to Moscow, Stalingrad, Kiev and the Soviet Georgia. Their contemporary counterparts also documented places and moments from lives of people in the former Soviet states today.

In other events, classical art will also find its spot in the program, with works by 16th century Venetian painter Titian selected to honour his legacy as the "master of colour”. Another exhibition will focus on Renaissance-era artists with exhibits from the Royal Library of Turin.

The subject of the 1918-1921 Georgian Democratic Republic will have its specific display at the Museum of Georgia, while the same venue will later also highlight the topic of Georgian artists in the realm of Soviet repressions.

The full program for the Museum Fest, set to run between May 15-30, can be viewed here.