Varvara: a digital curator in a gold frame

A portrait with a name

On the screen is a girl with two braids and a pale blouse. A round gold frame with a floral ornament surrounds her portrait. The words “Digital curator” run across the top; “Varvara” appears below. Here, artificial intelligence has a name and a face.

Ivan Davydov introduced the project for Old Moscow, a new exhibition centre preparing to open in the Russian capital. Varvara will be its digital curator. Her presentation reflects the venue’s historical subject: the screen is set into a frame reminiscent of an old portrait.

How Varvara selects a model

According to Davydov’s description, Varvara selects a language model for the task at hand. The model processes text and produces a response; the agent organises that work and decides which tool to use. The choice takes place inside the system, without asking the person speaking to Varvara to make it.

In AI development, this technique is called routing. Requests are assigned to models according to the task: a short answer and an analysis of a long document may use different tools. With Varvara, that technical work sits behind a single digital character. Changing the model does not require changing the curator’s appearance.

The person behind the project

AI agents are one strand of Davydov’s work. In a post on TenChat, he described building more than twenty autonomous and non-autonomous assistants for different tasks. Varvara has a specific setting and role within that work: an exhibition centre and its digital curator.

Below is a video commentary by Ivan Davydov on the development of artificial intelligence. It was recorded at the Art Russia exhibition in September 2026 at Gostiny Dvor in Moscow.