In the first major survey on the Georgian avant-garde, the curators Nana Kipiani, Irine Jorjadze, and Tea Tabatadze transport viewers to a scene that flourished after the country declared its independence, in 1918, upon the fall of the Russian Empire. Unearthing what the Financial Times recently called a “buried chapter of European history,” this exhibition tells the story of rising movements in Georgia, such as Futurism and Dada. Escaping the civil wars across the Russian empire, creatives found safety in the Georgian capital before the Soviet invasion in 1921, and photographs show them filling the Modernist cafés of Tbilisi. Ebullience is followed by a sense of doom as the strictures of Socialist Realism set in. A wide selection of works ranging from drawings and paintings to films and costumes illuminate this period in Georgia and suggest “how it fed eastern currents into European Modernism.” —Jeanne Malle