Schkola was founded by Irina Meglinskaya (Piganova) in 1991. Located at the Contemporary Art Center at Yakimanka, it was the first Russian gallery of contemporary photography. Later, the gallery began to work with many artists who produced cutting-edge photography with the help of the new technologies. Alongside traditional photographs, Schkola exhibited photo-objects, photo and video installations, computer-generated art, light art and a range of other combinations. The first Schkola exhibition was an homage to Dziga Vertov and Alexander Rodchenko, but after this show the gallery focused on contemporary artists including Maria Serebryakova, Vladislav Efimov, Ilya Piganov and Alexei Shulgin. Kommersant newspaper included Schkola into its top-five Russian galleries of 1995.
The archive contains portfolios of artists who worked with the gallery during the 1980s and early 1990s, including Arina Grantseva, Vladislav Efimov, Vladimir Kupriyanov, Yuri Leiderman, Alexander Roitburd, Maria Serebryakova, Vadim Fishkin, Alexei Shulgin, and FENSO group. The archive also contains documentation of the gallery’s exhibition projects in other venues, and press reviews.