CCA Tashkent Opens as Uzbekistan’s First Permanent Contemporary-Art Center

The Centre for Contemporary Arts Tashkent reopened in its completed permanent home on September 6 as a free, non-collecting venue for contemporary art, research, and community programming. The consequential part is not simply the conversion of a 1912 tram depot and diesel station: CCA Tashkent is a free, non-collecting institution whose first exhibition, library, residencies, commissions, and education program can now be judged as an operating cultural system.

 
 

What Opened in Tashkent on September 6

CCA Tashkent is a flagship project of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, or ACDF. The center’s institutional record describes it as Uzbekistan’s first permanent center for contemporary art and identifies ACDF as its lead organization. Studio KO adapted the building, designed in 1912 by Wilhelm Heinzelmann and used during its industrial life as a diesel station and tram depot.

That history supplies the building with a persuasive image, but the institution’s operating model is more important. Its official program combines exhibitions, visual art, performance, film, design, writing, music, residencies, research, and public events. Admission is free, although advance registration is required. A specialist library is also free by appointment.

The center is designed for the changing practices discussed in our guide to contemporary art, rather than around a permanent historical display. Artnet News reported that CCA is not a collecting institution and that ACDF declined to disclose the completed project’s final cost. Those two facts define the test ahead: CCA’s value will rest on the art it produces and presents, the research it makes available, and the audiences and artists it serves—not on the size of an owned collection.

The state-backed foundation has therefore built something closer to a kunsthalle and production platform than a conventional museum. That distinction makes the library, residencies, loans, and new commissions part of the institution’s core work, rather than accessories to a collection.

 

A 1914 share certificate for Tramways de Taschkent. Unknown authors and graphic artists; scan by EDHAC e.V., via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. Cropped.

 
 

Hikmah Tests the Model Through Art

The inaugural exhibition, Hikmah, runs from September 6, 2026, through January 31, 2027. CCA’s official exhibition record names ten artists: Ali Cherri, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Kimsooja, Tarik Kiswanson, Vladimir Pan, Shokhrukh Rakhimov, Bakhtiyar Saipov, Daribay Saipov, Muhannad Shono, and Nari Ward. Euronews, reporting from the opening, counted 11 works. The difference is not a contradiction: one figure counts artists, the other artworks.

The roster also shows how CCA is attempting to connect Uzbek practice to international loans and commissions. Rakhimov, a seventh-generation Uzbek ceramicist, made the site-specific The Colour of Silence, In Search of Truth (2026), using ceramic forms and seven colors associated with the teachings of the Central Asian Sufi scholar Najmiddin Kubro. Pan’s Untitled (1981), along with works by Daribay and Bakhtiyar Saipov, came from the State Museum of Arts of Karakalpakstan, commonly known as the Savitsky Museum. Those loans give the opening a regional modernist line rather than presenting contemporary art as an imported break with local history.

The international works respond to the building in different ways. Ward’s Tashkent Grounding (2026) incorporates the stamp used to impress patterns into Uzbek bread. Kaabi-Linke’s suspended Flying Carpets maps the rugs used by migrant street vendors in Venice and arrived on loan from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Kimsooja’s Archive of Mind invites visitors to roll clay, turning participation into the work’s accumulating material.

That balance matters. New art commissions can make an institution a producer rather than only a venue, while loans from New York and Nukus place different art histories in the same rooms. CCA’s opening is strongest where those functions meet: the site-specific work by Rakhimov, Ward’s use of an everyday Uzbek tool, and the Savitsky loans all make the program answerable to place.

One factual correction is necessary. CCA’s opening-day program labels Kaabi-Linke’s Flying Carpets as a 2015 work. The artist’s permanent work record dates it to 2011, identifies its 2011 commission, and places it in the Guggenheim collection. The 2011 date is also used by Artnet, AD Middle East, and Euronews, so 2011 is the supported date.

The Savitsky Museum in Nukus supplied several regional-modernist loans for Hikmah. Photo: Zuxra.bmr / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0.

 
 

A Center, Library, Residency, and Public Program

CCA’s claim to permanence is supported by infrastructure beyond the inaugural show. Its third-floor research library holds publications on art, visual cultures, critical theory, textiles, and craft, with an emphasis on the Global Majority. More unusually, it is building an archive of local artists’ studios. CCA calls it Central Asia’s first curatorial library; access is free in reservable two-hour slots.

Its artist-residency program began in October 2024, before the main building opened. The residency facilities include studios, living spaces, exhibition areas, a library, co-working zones, equipment, and technical support. CCA says it also uses the residencies for professional development, lectures, and workshops throughout the year.

The public opening demonstrated that the education language was not only promotional. The day included mediated exhibition tours, workshops for children and teenagers, poetry in the library, films by Kimsooja and Cherri, an artist conversation, and performances. That range gives “community engagement” a verifiable initial form. Whether it becomes sustained participation will depend on the regular calendar after the opening season.

The library and residency also fill different gaps. The library preserves access to knowledge and the working records of artists; the residency supplies time, space, tools, and exchange for new production. Together with the non-collecting exhibition program, they create a chain from research to production to public presentation. That is a more substantial institutional proposition than a restored building with rotating shows.

 
 

Uzbekistan’s First Is Clear; Central Asia’s Is Not

The precise national claim is that CCA is Uzbekistan’s first permanent state center for contemporary art, a category distinct from the country’s longstanding Contemporary Art Museum in Urgench. CCA’s own about page calls it the first permanent center for contemporary art in Uzbekistan, and independent opening reports from Artnet and Euronews use the same country-level description.

CCA’s opening notice goes further, calling the institution the first of its kind in the city and the region. That broader language needs qualification. The Almaty Museum of Arts’ own history records that it opened in Kazakhstan in autumn 2025 with a mission centered on modern and contemporary art, research, support, and public dialogue.

The institutions are not identical. Almaty Museum of Arts is a private collecting museum with more than 700 works, while CCA Tashkent is an ACDF-led, non-collecting center that combines commissions, residencies, research, and public programming. “First of its kind” may refer to that exact configuration, but CCA has not defined the category narrowly enough to support “Central Asia’s first contemporary-art institution” as a general statement. Uzbekistan’s first permanent center is accurate; the regional claim is a narrower institutional assertion, not a chronological first for contemporary-art organizations across Central Asia.

Almaty Museum of Arts opened in 2025, complicating any broad claim that CCA Tashkent is Central Asia’s first permanent contemporary-art institution. Photo: Dauren Nabijan / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0.

 
 

What the Opening Establishes

CCA’s own records establish a permanent, free-access contemporary-art center with an exhibition program, appointment-based research library, local studio archive, residencies, education, film, performance, and public events. The opening exhibition establishes a ten-artist roster and an 11-work display that joins new, site-responsive art to loans from the Savitsky and Guggenheim museums.

The artist’s record corrects CCA’s opening-day date for Flying Carpets: it is a 2011 work, not a 2015 one. Almaty Museum of Arts’ 2025 opening means CCA’s regional “first” cannot be expanded into a claim that Central Asia previously had no permanent contemporary-art institution. ACDF declined Artnet’s request for the final construction cost; CCA has announced a 2027 site-specific project by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, but has not published a fully dated post-Hikmah calendar or a long-term operating budget.