Alexandra Sankova is the director and founder of the Moscow Design Museum, which was established in 2012 with the mission to record, preserve and promote the design heritage of Russia. She has curated and co-curated a number of exhibitions at the museum that have toured internationally, including
Soviet Design 1950–1980 (2013),
Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design (2016), which received the Utopia Medal at the London Design Biennale in 2016, and
History of Russian Design 1917–2017 (2017), among many others. Sankova is the author of
23 (2010), co-author of
Designed in the USSR: 1950–1989 (2018) and
VNIITE: Discovering Utopia – Lost Archives of Soviet Design (2018), and co-produced the four-part Russian television documentary
History of Russian Design (2018).
The Moscow Design Museum was founded in 2012 and is the first cultural institution in Russia specifically dedicated to design. Its main objective is to preserve and popularize Russian design heritage at home and abroad. In September 2016 the museum's Russian exhibition at the first London Design Biennale, was awarded the Utopia Medal for its entry, 'Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design'.