The Museum of Freedom

All over the world people are trying to figure out how to preserve the work of street artists. There are galleries that collect and display their work, and there are museums specializing in tours of local graffiti, but only in Russia is there an institution with a permanent address and a permanent collection.

And it is not afraid to call itself the Street Art Museum.

St. Petersburg’s Street Art Museum (SAM) is located on Revolution Highway, far from the city center and its well-known tourist attractions. It is run by a private organization and operates in an industrial site, sharing space with a functioning factory. This is because SAM is the brainchild of Andrei Zaitsev, the son of the factory’s director, Dmitry Zaitsev.