If Russian contemporary art was born in the 1990s, given life by the collapse of Communism, it is now an awkward teenager hitting a growth spurt fueled by collectors flush with oil money. Adolescence is simultaneously exciting and confusing, and both emotions are on display at Moscow’s Vinzavod art district, which has become the heart of the country’s art scene since its inauguration early last year. It seems only yesterday that the city’s few decent galleries were widely dispersed and experiencing sporadic activity; now several are clustered in still-raw former winery buildings with soaring ceilings and plenty of parking space out front for collectors.

As prices at auction mount for work by the post-1960s generation of Russian artists, a crop of younger ones is coming up. Auspicious signs have been appearing everywhere for some time, promoting hopes that Russian art will someday have the same cachet that Chinese work does now. The 2005 “Russia!” exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York had a section devoted to contemporary pieces. The momentum carried through to last year’s second Moscow Biennale, which brought to the city the most prominent members of the jet-setting art world. The contemporary fair Art Moscow has been getting more attention, too, and will hold its 13th edition in May.

New institutions have flourished, most notably two founded by private collectors to show off their holdings. Last March, construction magnate Vladimir Semenikhin established the Yekaterina Cultural Foundation, named after his wife; two months later, plastics magnate Igor Markin opened a considerably more idiosyncratic museum of Russian contemporary art in various media, where visitors can vote on which works please them most.

Of course, there’s a downside to all this frenetic activity—teenage angst, as it were. For one thing, very few of the new institutions are dedicated to supporting and developing contemporary art. A few glamorous-sounding projects exist—such as the new space in St. Petersburg’s famous State Hermitage Museum devoted to pieces from Charles Saatchi’s collection, part of a larger effort by the museum to solidify its commitment to work being made now. But these don’t supply the same kind of countrywide art infrastructure found in the United States and Western Europe.

According to Nicholas Iljine, the Guggenheim director of corporate development in Europe and the Middle East, who is of Russian descent himself, “There are no adequate state-funded spaces for contemporary art apart from the modest activities of the National Center for Contemporary Arts.” A related problem is the lack of contemporary-art education—one exception being the postgraduate course at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Moscow, which two-time Moscow Biennale commissioner Joseph Backstein founded in 1991.

Moreover, the sense of estrangement from the rest of the world that characterized the Soviet era hasn’t gone away, and Russia is somewhat removed from the larger international contemporary-art scene. “We are still quite isolated,” admits Backstein.

One barrier to Russia’s greater integration in the art world is simply the difficulty of its language and its alphabet. But outsiders also haven’t acquired the cultural background necessary to understand the art coming out of the country. Says Aidan Salakhova, an artist and one of Moscow’s first gallerists, “European and American curators come here and look through the frame of art that they have. It’s not possible. You need context to understand and accept [what we’re producing].”

Government censorship can still be an obstacle as well. Last fall, the Russian minister of culture prevented an artwork by the Blue Noses group that depicts two policemen kissing in a snowy landscape from traveling to Paris for an exhibition of political art.

One thing is certain: The contemporary-art scene has embraced the open market as much as—or more than—the rest of the booming Russian economy has. The fast pace of commercial gallery development in Moscow even has some collectors concerned. “Every day there is a new gallery opening and a new show. It’s too much going on,” says Russian-born collector Janna Bullock, now a New York–based real estate developer. “This is normal for an emerging market, but it seems a little artificial. I hope it will slow down a bit.”