Photo: “Moscow” Agency of the urban news, Kirill Zykov

What I certainly love in Moscow the most is the rampant cravings of people for spiritual and cultural education. Here, teenagers read Sartre in the metro, and here–even in the most run-down theater–tickets are snapped up a month in advance, here people break down the door to a gallery as a result of being frantically impatient to contemplate great Russian impressionism.

Frankly, I have even subjected myself to withstanding many lines to Moscow museums. I remember the huge line to the Mondrian exhibition, and even bigger lines to the Pre-Raphaelites and Caravaggio in the Pushkin Museum. The queue at “The Romanovs” exhibition in the Manezh museum was truly epic in scale–it looked like people were standing there not only hours, but days. But Valentin Serov–one of Russia’s most beloved artists—has definitely broken all records.

On January 22, two days before the closure of the large-scale exhibition of Serov in the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val, two huge queues gathered at the door of the gallery. One line was for fans of impressionism with electronic tickets, the other line–for traditionalists with normal tickets. Unable to bear such a long languor, intoxicated with winter air (that day it was about -14C) people from the second queue just broke open the gallery’s front door. Because no one dares to hinder the human’s desire for beauty!

The queue at the exhibition "The Romanovs" at the Manezh Museum.

The queue at the exhibition "Valentin Serov. The 150th anniversary of the birth" in the Tretyakov Gallery

The queue at the exhibition of Ilya Glazunov at the Manezh Museum

The queue at the exhibition "My history. XX century" at the Manezh Museum

The queue at the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at The Pushkin Museum

The queue at the exhibition "Rurikovich" at the Manezh Museum

The exhibition of Valentin Serov’s artworks, devoted to the 150th anniversary of the artist, occupies three floors of the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val. The exhibition includes around a hundred paintings and a half hundreds of graphic works by the master, including the famous painting “Girl with Peaches”.

The exhibition made a record for attendance: from the opening until January 13, it was visited by 360 thousand people. Thus, it was extended until January 24.