On December 20, 2018, the library of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art Educational Center hosted a discussion of the book by Gleb Smirnov "ARTODOXIA". The author presented his new work — a defiantly polemical manifesto affecting the sphere of the current religious revival / crisis. The presentation took place in the format of a discussion about the role of culture in contemporary world, its mythology and the chances of becoming the prevailing worldview for humanity. The opponent of Gleb Smirnov was the literary critic Alexander Gavrilov. The discussion was attended by Dmitry Aksenov, President of the Aksenov Family Foundation and Alexander Markov, Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Russian State University for the Humanities.

Gleb Smirnov, art theorist, author of the monumental work "Palladio" and the collection of essays "Metaphysics of Venice", defines his new book as a treatise on the "Religion of Art" — the global religion of the 21st century. The book was published by the Ripol-Classic publishing house with the support of the Aksenov Family Foundation.

The author argues that culture is a new religion that humanity needs in order to find itself in the future. For the most part, people are disunited by confessions according to their place of residence and the fact of birth. The only thing that can unite them is a supranational and secular culture, which at the same time has all the signs of religion, the main of which is the promise of overcoming death. The author examines culture in this regard, and due to the religious nature of it, he speaks of "cultural Slavs" or artodoxism.

The word "arthodoxia" denotes the spiritual reality of contemporary world, in which traditional religions are gradually giving way to culture in the souls of people, with its new temples in the form of museums, philharmonic societies, universities, and theaters. Adepts of this religion, often without suspecting it themselves, are all people who consume or produce art, and this is a huge layer of contemporary humanity: all those who read, love music, poetry, painting and cinema, harmony in all its manifestations, including in ethics.

In his book, Gleb Smirnov points out that the idea of the "religion of culture" itself has existed for a long time, citing Hellenic thinkers, Italian humanists, French enlighteners, German romantics and Russian poets (see Mandelstam's "culture became the Church")... However, before the book "ARTODOXIA" it was not articulated in detail by anyone as an integral teaching. This book is intended to become a conceptual platform for a new generation of Russian intelligentsia and the art community.

The discussion was the first event organized as part of the partnership between the Aksenov Family Foundation and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.