About Pushkin House

Pushkin House, established in 1954 during the Cold War, is an independent registered charity and a dynamic arts organisation that critically explores Russian culture and provides a platform for artists and creative practitioners from Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Our exhibitions, community engagement and public programming across history, literature, music and performance focus on themes of identity, citizenship, migration, displacement and belonging. While the original endowment set up more than half a century ago ensures its independence, Pushkin House relies on ticket sales, public grants and donations to sustain our high quality programming.

Archival Photographs Display

We will be presenting a display of photographs from our archive, which were sent to Pushkin House by the “Union of Soviet Friendship Societies and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries” in Moscow as part of a cultural propaganda programme in the 1960s. The images help tell stories of the early history of Pushkin House, contextualise its role as a space in the present, and its relationships with organisations in Russia across the “Cold War” divide. The display will be contextualised with audio recorded interviews about the history of our organisation, as well as wall text information about the photographs themselves, how they related to the communities that formed Pushkin House, and its nature as a cultural space in the present.

The exhibition is free and open to the public from 13th September until 21st September during the working hours of Pushkin House.

Guided Tours

During the Open House Festival we invite you on a guided tour around our 18th-century building as well as for a meeting with our team, who will help the visitors to engage with the archival materials and provide deeper explanation of Pushkin House's history and its current role as a space for community engagement.

We will run two sessions on Wednesday 17 September starting at 5pm and 6pm and on Saturday 20 September Saturday at 2pm and 3pm; attendance is free and open to all, but booking is essential.

Architecture

Pushkin House's building was designed by Henry Flitcroft (1697–1769) who favoured the Palladian style, emphasising classical features of order and symmetry. His best-known commission, designed on a monumental scale, was Woburn Abbey, stately home of the Duke of Bedford. Flitcroft was much more modest in Bloomsbury; those street-front railings have a touch of class, but the panelled front door, with two narrow “attendant” windows, looks slim and spare. Again, on the first floor, two narrow lights flank the main round-headed window. The second floor has a Diocletian window, semi-circular, with two vertical mullions, continuing the tripartite theme.

Inside the house, the striking feature of the entrance hall is the pair of classical pillars marking off the stairwell. The hall is exactly the same width as the central section of the façade. Some of the ground floor rooms have original woodwork and plaster decorations. We have more detailed information about the architecture of the House available for our visitors.