Thematic Horizons of Regional Contemporary Art Exhibitions: Existential Values, Micro- and Macro-History, Humanistic Ideals

This study examines contemporary art institutions as spaces of cultural production that exert a normative influence on their audiences. Although contemporary art galleries in Russia are receiving growing attention from social scientists, these studies often concentrate mainly on audience profiles. The study aims to identify the themes that galleries consider important for their audiences, as well as the semantic and value-based emphases in their interpretation of these themes. A content analysis of exhibition announcements from four galleries in Yekaterinburg between 2020 and 2023 was conducted based on grounded theory. The three-stage coding of these announcements allowed us to identify the themes that galleries consider important for their audiences and to reveal the conceptual and value-based emphases in interpreting these themes. We found that exhibitions most frequently address three themes: existential values, micro- and macro-history, and humanistic ideals. The study also describes institutional conditions that influence the exhibition policies of galleries.