Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, opens today; showtimes, tickets and information can be found at filmforum.org.

Marina Abramovic (Getty Images)

At the Museum of Modern Art premiere of HBO Films’ Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present on Thursday, HBO’s president of documentary programming, Sheila Nevins, admitted she’d had her doubts about the film. “I sort of had heard of her, but I thought she was one of those arty-farty types,” she told Gallerist of the initial pitch. The producers convinced her to visit MoMA and sit across from Ms. Abramovic during her 2010 performance-art installation. “Once I did that, I knew it would play in Iowa. I was so moved. Why? I didn’t mean to be. There’s no reason. But when I looked at her, and she looked at me...” Ms. Nevins trailed off. The film, shot before and during the artist’s MoMA retrospective, is to open at Film Forum on June 13 and air on HBO on July 2.

Klaus Biesenbach, director of MoMA PS1 and chief curator at large of MoMA (he described himself, in introducing the film, as the man who “gets to do all the fun things like Marina or Kraftwerk”), had some insight into what it must have been like for Ms. Abramovic to cede control to director Matthew Akers. “I think she plays with this anyway,” he told Gallerist. “She was the author when she was in the atrium. Marina has had everything she ever did documented.” Mr. Biesenbach is heavily featured in the film, kissing Ms. Abramovic on the cheeks to close The Artist Is Present and admitting, “When I first met her, I thought she was in love with me. Then I realized she’s in love with the world.”

Ms. Abramovic told us that she was still recovering from a show she did last fall at Dasha Zhukova’s Garage art center in Moscow. “The show at the Garage was the biggest show of my life,” she said. “Dasha Zhukova did something so special. First, I never had a show with such dimensions. They have this enormous space the architect built so that every piece has the space it needed.

“Plus, I had brain research from the scientists of Russia on the brain and how it works. We are now collecting, data and in November we’re going to have a meeting in Moscow to actually examine the question.” Ms. Abramovic’s steady gaze is said to affect the chemistry of the brain; her show at the Garage analyzed the phenomenon brainwaves of visitors gazing at one another.

On the Garage show (which Mr. Biesenbach curated) and how it differed from MoMA’s retrospective, he offered, “The most significant difference is that The Artist Is Present is a unique performance and she can do it only here.”

The Garage show was so comprehensive, Ms. Abramovic said, that “I could die now, there’s nothing left to do. It’s satisfying but at the same time frightening. Everything is done and in perfect condition.” There’s but one unanswered question: how her own brain works. “[The scientists] told me—I didn’t know this—that my brain waves were very particular. They are different, they are more frequent, they are more illuminated. It’s reflected in some kind of energy—the reaction of people. There’s much more to it. I’m looking for the doctors to explain to me what really happened to the consciousness. They told me this kind of consciousness is not common. I feel it, but I don’t know what it means.”

Ms. Abramovic declined to watch the screening—“It’s too personal,” she told us—but appeared for a question-and-answer session afterward. Seated onstage for but a moment, she announced, “I’ve been sitting too long,” and stood up to rapturous applause.

Who's that girl? Magazine editor, fashion icon, gallerist, socialite, art patron...30-year-old Dasha Zhukova has everyone from Moscow to London to New York wanting to know more and more about the elusive beauty. Born in Moscow, the only child of a molecular biologist, Elena Zhukova, and an oil magnate, Alexander Zhukov, Dasha Zhukova moved to California with her mother after the end of her parents’ marriage. She spent 12 years in Los Angeles, then moved back to Russia after graduating from UC Santa Barbara. Clearly at home across international society, Zhukova now lives in London with her son and her billionaire boyfriend, U.K.'s Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich. The two met at a friend's dinner party in Moscow soon after he separated from his wife (to whom he handed a cool $300 million divorce settlement) and had just sold his stake in private Russian oil company, Sibneft, to the tune of $13 billion.

As the daughter of a wealthy Russian family, then as an international “It girl” who is a regular in the pages of Vogue with pals like stylist Giovanna Battaglia, Margherita Missoni and fellow Russian beauty, supermodel Natalia Vodianova, and now as the romantic partner of Abramovich, Zhukova has found herself measured in relation to those around her. One could even speculate that Zhukova's rise is a direct result of her relationship with Abramovich, but she is clearly keen to carve out her own success—proven by her CV boasting an impressive list of professional achievements: founder of the IRIS Foundation, which works to promote the understanding and development of contemporary culture, fashion designer with her own label, Kova & T, and head of The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture.

Her days of appearing on the pages of magazines as a model (and editing for Pop magazine) have gracefully faded into running her own fashion and art magazine. Garage magazine, founded in 2011 as a companion to the art gallery of the same name, immediately caused a flurry of media interest through a controversial cover image featuring a butterfly-tattooed labia. The butterfly tattoo was designed by possibly the only artist capable of making the statement: the always naughty Damien Hirst. In fact, several prominent artists created tattoos for the first edition of Garage. The Chapman brothers, for example, tattooed each other and the magazine itself handed out temporary tattoos across New York City. Garage, now in its third installment, most recently featured a gay pregnant rabbit on the cover and is a paean to the cause of same-sex marriage. Pinar Yolacan, a photographer and video artist, created a fish-themed spread for the issue. Clearly the publication has no desire to play things safe and, much like Zhukova herself, Garage has positioned itself somewhere in the interstitial territory between notoriety, fashion and art. Of course, these links between high fashion and art are being increasingly explored with the work of fashion designers such as Alexander McQueen presented in museum shows and artistic prints informing the collections of newer design stars such as Mary Katrantzou. In this case, as with much else, Zhukova appears commendably in step with the times.

Back in June 2008, Zhukova hosted an event to celebrate the opening of the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow. The gala itself lay somewhere in between the glittering but elegant excess of War and Peace and the voluptuous degeneracy of Dmitri Karamazov. The late Amy Winehouse performed for three hundred international guests at a rumored fee of $1 million in the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, a cavernous architectural landmark in Moscow roughly the same square footage as the Tate Modern. The only work of art installed in the gallery was a massive light installation, by the artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, resembling a ghostly inverted Christmas tree, which pulsated light throughout the space. In suitably lavish Russian fashion, the revelers drank vodka and champagne and dined on a mix of Piri-piri shrimp and steak. The guest list offered a similar surfeit of delights as celebrities mixed with art-world luminaries; Ronald Lauder and Princess Caroline of Monaco mingled with Jeff Koons and his hugely influential art dealer Larry Gagosian as they celebrated the opening of the new heart of contemporary Russian culture.

An event of this nature could perhaps be seen as a product of our particularly consumerist times, a 21st century extravaganza reflecting celebrities and celebrity artists. Yet a similar approach was far from unheard of in the annals of the art parties of Moscow. In fact, that evening in June represented more of a return to the norm for a capital that has repeatedly been the home of the world’s greatest art collections over the past two centuries. Little more than a hundred years ago, the Morozov Palace on Smolensk Boulevard, home of the art collector and textile tycoon Misha Morozov and his stunning 18-year-old bride Margarita, opened its doors every weekend to lavish brunches for the city’s intelligentsia, artists and glitterati alike. The bonds between wealth, art and fashion are historically powerful and remain undimmed today—especially with Zhukova (and Abramovich) on the scene.

“Basically everything she touches becomes a success,” says  Nicolas lljine, a prominent expert on Russian contemporary culture, referring to Zhukova’s detailed involvement in the running of Garage and her essential capability of bringing the most interesting and versatile people together. Although her entry onto the slippery stage of the international art scene appears to be rather sudden and a range of interests could be seen as masking a lack of focus, the culture of the industry tends to forgive a lack of experience, if it is coupled with a talent for clever delegation, heavy spending and sophistication. Her interest in fashion and style has evolved to take on and succeed in the daunting task of creating a cultural institution, which not only makes a national impact and provides patronage for a local art scene, but one which is noted by the international art world. In a similar fashion to her 19th century predecessors, Zhukova has followed the lead of well-known experts and art-world insiders to help her realize a functioning and organic art museum. And Zhukova's youth, beauty and bank account certainly doesn't hurt.

While collecting the works of established classic artists from the 20th century, Zhukova is also forging working partnerships with emerging and mid-career artists. Yolacan, for example, initially contributed a video to the Garage project “Commercial Break” as part of the 2011 Venice Biennale and later returned to work on the current issue of Garage magazine. This patronage of newer and mid-career artists is as important now as it was a hundred years ago and can have the same profound impact.

As the lease on the current home of the GCCC ran its course and the venue closed its doors this winter, the museum is seeking to expand on an exponential scale. Having spent three years in a beloved Russian architectural landmark designed by the constructivist Melnikov, the GCCC has seemingly garnered the requisite accolades as both a notable venue and assembled an impressive team of curators who deliver world-class exhibitions in order to expand further. Marina Abramovic, Christain Marclay, Carsten Höller, William Kentridge and James Turrell have all had exhibitions in the space, as well as group exhibitions with über-cool titles including How Soon Is Now and Dysfashional. The new venue for the GCCC will be Gorky Park, which has historically been in an area of Moscow known for its cultural importance. Across the street sits the Central House of Artists and various significant cultural institutions, yet in recent years the area could benefit from a new lease of life. The new Garage Center, alongside the impressive efforts made by the new head of Moscow’s Cultural Department, Sergey Kapkov, will provide just that.

Further plans for the expansion of Zhukova’s cultural initiative amidst the vast development of New Holland Island in St. Petersburg have raised a storm of conjecture regarding the possibility that the site may become the permanent home of Abramovich’s vast personal collection. The plans for New Holland, a triangular island surrounded by canals linking the Moika and the Neva rivers, would turn the expansive landscape of former naval warehouses into a giant center for art, culture and commerce. Hannah Byers, an expert in Russian art and the Associate Director of Exhibition Management at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, describes the development as an “unprecedented opportunity.” With a proposal for a Guggenheim in Helsinki, a few hours away by high-speed train, the renaissance of St. Petersburg as a cultural capital with close links to Europe is an enticing possibility.

Zhukova’s interest in international (and particularly Western) art prompts some interesting questions regarding the continuing appetite of Russian audiences for the work of foreign artists. For a country that has a capital so closely connected to the heartland of Europe, but which stretches across the globe to China, an international cultural outlook is perhaps unsurprising. Historically, there have been two schools of Russian collectors, those interested in Russian art and those with a passion for the best and the new from the international art scene.

For the past 20 years the Russian market has seemingly been concentrated on local artists, but with the success of the Garage Center and its continued developments in Gorky Park and New Holland Island, the Russian artistic outlook is once again beginning to focus on international artists. This duality of interests is an element that Zhukova’s Garage Center excels at promoting.
By 1919 the Russian Constructivist Movement led by the sculptor Tatlin and designer and architect El Lissitzky represented the forefront of artistic expression, heavily influencing the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements throughout Western Europe. It will be interesting to see what the work of Zhukova and a new generation of Russian patrons and collectors will give rise to.

As Nic lljine significantly emphasizes, Zhukova’s Garage project is one of a few platforms in contemporary Russia where it is possible to “introduce both the international and the local art scene to a Russian audience.” International art stars, an impressive venue and new ideas; Zhukova has clearly discovered the essential elements necessary to be a modern-day patron and cultural innovator. You could do a lot worse than to keep an eye on the work flowing from the banks of the Moika in the years to come. And with brains, beauty and a seemingly bottomless bank account, Zhukova is already well on her way to being this century's Peggy Guggeheim.