ABOVE: detail from Ilya Repin’s Barge Haulers on the Volga (1873), which will come to New York in September as part of the Guggenheim’s eagerly anticipated but obnoxiously named “RUSSIA!” show.

The Guggenheim’s New York franchise yesterday announced its big fall show, which will bring together more than 250 pieces of Russian art, dating back to the 12th century, and some of which have never travelled outside the country before. To adequately capture the excitement this exhibit evokes, the show bears the exciting name “RUSSIA!,” with the caps-lock and exclamation mark mandatory. It will open on September 16 and close in early January.

The show is clearly a massive undertaking, and it’s involved about a dozen curators in Russia and elsewhere; the pieces which will come to the Guggenheim have been cobbled together from museums across Russia, from the State Russian Museum, the Hermitage, the Kremlin Museum, regional galleries, and private collections. The Guggenheim press release says the exhibit will be organized chronologically, starting with medieval icons at the ground floor and spiralling up the corkscrew through genres including romanticism, critical realism (and its evil twin, socialist realism), and ending with post-soviet contemporary works. Seems worth an exclamation mark or two, but it still sounds like the title of a musical adaptation of the complete works of Solzhenitsyn. Coming to Broadway soon: Gulag!

LINK: Guggenheim Museum press office > RUSSIA!