Autumn is the season when St Petersburg feels especially convincing in its role as Russia’s museum capital. The new exhibition season brings together ambitious projects from major state museums and striking statements from contemporary art — from immersive media installations at Sevkabel Port to rare Renaissance works at the Hermitage, from stories of women who shaped Russian culture to photographs that transform the human body into a form of visual poetry.
The editors of Antenna Daily have selected the season’s essential exhibitions to include in your cultural itinerary this autumn.
“Trajectories of Intervals”
Sevkabel Port Until 18 October 2026
An autumn journey through contemporary art should begin at Sevkabel Port, where media art ceases to be an object of observation and becomes a space in which the viewer is a full participant. “Trajectories of Intervals” brings together twelve large-scale installations by artists from Russia, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Mexico and Taiwan.
Each room offers its own way of interacting with space through light, sound, movement and digital technologies. There is no single prescribed route; the exhibition is conceived as an open system in which the path is discovered intuitively and impressions gradually form a personal narrative. It is one of those rare cases where media art demands not speed but attentive presence, allowing visitors to truly inhabit each installation.
“Opening the Palace Chambers: Art at the Court of the Emir of Bukhara”
The State Hermitage Museum Until 4 October 2026
One of the most substantial historical exhibitions of the season has opened in the General Staff Building of the Hermitage. The project is dedicated to the art of the Emirate of Bukhara at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, a period of active cultural and diplomatic dialogue with the Russian Empire.
Around seventy works of decorative and applied art, brought from museums in Uzbekistan and the Hermitage collection, reveal the world of court culture through objects used by the Bukharan elite: luxurious gold-embroidered robes, jewellery, weapons, interior pieces and ceremonial accessories. Particularly valuable are the exhibits that have left Uzbekistan for the first time.
Special attention should be paid to the section devoted to gifts presented by the emirs of Bukhara to the Russian imperial court — rare monuments of diplomatic history that today are perceived not only as museum treasures but also as evidence of cultural exchange between two states.
“Leda and the Swan. Michelangelo (Circle of). From a Private Collection”
The State Hermitage Museum Until 31 December 2026
Small камерal exhibitions often become the Hermitage’s most rewarding discoveries. Presented in the Italian Cabinet of the New Hermitage, this exhibition continues the museum’s series dedicated to Renaissance works from private collections.
At its centre is a painting associated with the circle of Michelangelo and devoted to one of the most famous subjects of classical mythology. For admirers of Renaissance art, it is a rare opportunity to see a work that seldom appears in public; for a wider audience, it offers a chance to encounter a familiar classical theme outside the usual museum context.
“The Great One: The Image of Woman in Russian Art”
The Russian Museum Until 11 January 2027
Undoubtedly one of the year’s largest museum projects. More than three hundred works of painting, graphic art, sculpture and decorative arts from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century are displayed across eleven ceremonial halls of the Mikhailovsky Palace.
The exhibition is less about an ideal of feminine beauty than about the role of women in Russian history and culture. Empresses, princesses, artists, ballerinas, actresses, poets and patrons become part of a broader narrative about time, society and artistic tradition.
Repin, Bryullov, Serov, Kramskoi, Levitsky, Kustodiev and Makovsky are all represented, while historical costumes, precious accessories and objects of palace life add further depth to the display. One of the exhibition’s major sensations is the first large-scale presentation of the watercolours of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna Romanova following their scholarly restoration and study.
Another distinctive feature is the theatrical audio guide, which transforms the traditional museum route into a multilayered audio performance where music, literary narration and acting become part of the exhibition experience.
Rob Woodcox — “Limitless Possibilities of the Body”
Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art Until 8 November 2026
The new exhibition by American photographer Rob Woodcox invites viewers to see the body not as an object of representation but as a language through which humans interact with the surrounding world.
His works balance between photography, contemporary dance and surrealist cinema. Figures seem to dissolve into architecture, water, trees and landscapes, becoming part of a single natural system. Without relying on elaborate digital effects, Woodcox creates images in which physics yields to emotion and reality almost imperceptibly slips into fantasy.
This is one of those exhibitions where photography stops being a document and becomes a visual metaphor — fragile, cinematic and deeply human.
St Petersburg once again offers a rich exhibition season in which classical art stands alongside new technologies, and major museum projects coexist with experimental artistic practices. Whether you are drawn to centuries of history, contemporary photography or media art, the city has everything it takes this autumn to turn an ordinary museum visit into a genuine cultural journey.
By Boris Romanov
