Zhukova. (Patrick McMullan)

Dasha Zhukova has been awarded the 2012 Leo Award by the Independent Curators International. Named after the pioneering art dealer Leo Castelli, the award honors the achievements of similarly ground-breaking figures in the field of contemporary art. Ms. Zhukova's being recognized for her “pioneering and forward-thinking” approach to conceiving of and building new institutions and creating international opportunities for artists and curators.

Ms. Zhukova is the founder of the Garage: Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, the editor-in-chief of Garage magazine and the creative director of Art.sy and has been very busy turning Moscow into an epicenter of contemporary art activity. She recently announced that Garage, a Kunsthalle-like exhibition space, would be getting a redesign by Rem Koolhaas.

With the Leo Award, Ms. Zhukova is keeping good company, as always. She follows a long list of renowned recipients including critics, collectors and artists such as Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein, Chuck Close, Christo & Jeanne-Claude and John Waters. The award will be presentedat ICI’s Annual Fall Benefit and Auction on Nov. 19, 2012, by ICI trustee emerita Agnes Gund.

Congratulations to Ms. Zhukova.

(Courtesy the Garage)

The Garage Center for Contemporary Art, the museum started by Dasha Zhukova in a former bus depot, announced that it has plans for a new home that will be designed by Rem Koolhaus's firm Offices for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Gorky Park, a Soviet-era recreation ground.

Ever since its lease ran out in 2011 at the depot, the Garage Center has set up a temporary home—a launch pad of sorts—to "develop and regenerate a number of temporary and permanent spaces," according to a statement it issued.

One of these off-shoot projects is the Rem Koolhaus temporary space that is being developed on the site of Gorky Park’s renowned '60s Vremena Goda (Four Seasons) restaurant, which has been abandoned for more than two decades. The rehabilitated historic spot is scheduled to open in late 2012. It combines a "double height entrance space, two levels of unobstructed exhibition galleries, creative center for children, roof terrace, shop, cafe, learning facilities and offices."

The new design will incorporate Soviet-era design elements like tiles, mosaic and brick, keeping the new space aesthetically linked to the roots of the historic park, a 300-acre terrain along the Moskva River designed in the 1920s by avant-garde Constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov who is also responsible for Garage’s current space. The Russian design firm Form Bureau, headed by architect Olga Trevias, is working with Koolhaus's OMA to bring the plan to completion.

The new space will embrace the Garage Center's mission, which, since it first opened in 2008, is to explore and develop contemporary culture while also being a community center and catalyst for the emerging arts scene in Moscow. Some of its notable shows are Christian Marclay's The Clock, the first solo exhibition in Russia of James Turrell and the group show "New York Minute."