Russia has earmarked $177 million (US) for the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art's four-year restoration and renovation, beginning in 2009.
RAI Novosti reported on May 5, 2008 that the Russian government has allocated more than 4.2 billion rubles or $177 million (US) for the restoration and modernization of its Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, a Beaux Art structure completed in 1912. The Pushkin, Moscow's largest museum of European art, also houses collections of Egyptian antiquities, Trojan gold artifacts and replicas of ancient sculptures.
Plans call for the construction of two exhibition areas, a new 600-seat concert hall, a library, larger storage facilities, an office building, underground parking lot, dining areas and retail shops, increasing the institution's space fourfold. The British architect Lord Norman Foster (b. 1935), winner of the Pritzker Achitecture Award (1999), has been approached to lead the museum's modernization project.
Scheduled to close in 2009, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts will reopen in 2012 for its 100th anniversary.
