On March 4, 2026, the exhibition Rules of the Game: How Sport Has Shaped Culture will open at the St Petersburg branch of the State Museum of Sport. The exhibition is implemented on the initiative of the Vladimir Potanin Foundation. The key event of the project will be the donation of works of contemporary art by the Foundation to the Museum, which will become part of its permanent collection and exhibition program.
The exhibition continues an interdisciplinary exploration of sport as a cultural and social phenomenon, launched by the Vladimir Potanin Foundation and the Consumer Culture (Kultura Potrebleniya) company in 2025, and for the first time is integrated into a museum space as a curatorial project.
Oksana Oracheva, General Director of the Vladimir Potanin Foundation:
Expanding museum collections is an essential part of the life of any museum. It is a tool for development and an opportunity for new interpretations of our heritage. For us, contributing to museum collections is an important instrument of systemic philanthropy focused on strengthening cultural infrastructure in the long term. In this case, we are donating to the State Museum of Sport a holistic curatorial statement that can be organically integrated into the museum’s work and evolve together with it.
Sport as a social institution shapes a language of norms, rules, and values, influencing behavioral models and public perceptions of fairness, competition, and success. Contemporary art makes it possible to see and reflect on these processes at a deeper level. We view this donation as a contribution to the development of the museum and to the formation of a contemporary cultural discourse on sport as a significant social phenomenon.
The collection of the State Museum of Sport will be expanded with works of contemporary art created specifically to explore the themes of sport, rules, and social norms.
Ivan Rybin, Director of the State Museum of Sport:
For decades, the collections of the State Museum of Sport have been formed, among other things, through donations — fr om athletes, federations, public organizations, and partner institutions. Our collection includes unique items transferred for permanent storage, including personal belongings of outstanding athletes and iconic artifacts of sports history.
The donation by the Vladimir Potanin Foundation of a comprehensive artistic and curatorial project to the Museum is an event of special significance. These are not individual exhibits, but a conceptually structured set of works that strengthens the interdisciplinary direction of our work and expands the understanding of sport as part of the cultural and social process.
The project features four games, each of which is an attraction created by theatre directors and contemporary artists.
The game Paleofitness turns to the origins of movement — survival-based bodily practices from which sport emerged — and invites visitors to go through a sequence of actions related to basic human skills. The game objects for this part of the exhibition were developed by Eburet designers using recycled plastic.
In the game Game Thinking, chess is viewed as a model of the world order. Objects by Olya Kroitor — artist and performance artist, laureate of the Kandinsky Prize — Sasha Posokh, creator of objects at the intersection of art and the designed environment, as well as works by the Pärla brand and others, will be donated. Their works reinterpret the familiar logic of a chess match and transform strategy into an artistic image. Another work exhibited in this section is a chess composition by Alexey Luka — an artist and sculptor working with architectural geometry of form.
The game Architecture of Sport invites visitors to design their own “city of sport.” The installation is conceived as an architectural field in which forms symbolize different types of sports infrastructure — from a school gym to a stadium — and demonstrates how the placement of facilities affects accessibility, scale, and the nature of the sports environment.
The game Everyone Can, or How to Fall in Love with Sport is dedicated to inclusion and equal participation. Director Mikhail Plutakhin and artist Lyalya Vaganova created it based on interviews with project participants — winners of the Sports for All competition within the Vladimir Potanin Foundation’s grant program.
The exhibition brings together art objects, interactive formats, and game-based mechanics. The curator is Daria Zhenikhova, founder of the Consumer Culture (Kultura Potrebleniya) company:
The exhibition invites viewers to look at sport outside the usual lens — as a system of social and cultural codes that influence us even if we are not professionally involved in sport.
The way directors and artists explore this topic is an attempt to dismantle and reassemble the very phenomenon of sport. At the same time, the format remains light and playful — you can simply enter the space and start playing.
After the exhibition in St Petersburg concludes, the donated works will be included in the museum’s permanent collection and will continue an active exhibition life. They are planned to be integrated into current and future exhibitions devoted to the interaction of sport, culture, and society, as well as used in the museum’s traveling exhibitions across the country.
On the basis of the donated works, a standalone exhibition section will be formed, aimed at a broad audience — from schoolchildren and students to researchers and professional communities. The exhibition will complement the traditional historical and sports narrative with an artistic perspective on sport as a mechanism for shaping social rules, identity, and cultural models of behavior.
The exhibition in St Petersburg will run until summer 2026, after which the project will move to Sochi — to the Yug Sport federal training base, wh ere the State Museum of Sport regularly presents its key exhibition projects.
About the Organizers
The Vladimir Potanin Foundation is a nonprofit grant-making organization implementing large-scale programs in culture, education, sport, and philanthropy. Founded in 1999, the Foundation shapes a contemporary culture of philanthropy and brings together professional communities working toward sustainable social change.
The State Museum of Sport is a federal institution under the Ministry of Sport of Russia, combining research, archival, and exhibition activities in the field of sports history and culture. The Museum forms a collection of trophies, awards, equipment, and documents reflecting the development of national and global sport, and presents them through exhibitions, educational, and outreach programs.
Consumer Culture (Kultura Potrebleniya) is a team of specialists engaged in the development of sociocultural strategies, development concepts, educational programs, and design for public and commercial organizations, as well as the organization of Russian and international festivals, forums, and other public events.
Press Contacts
The Vladimir Potanin Foundation
comms@fondpotanin.ru
Museum of Sport
museumsportspb@yandex.ru
Logo
