Hermitage Museum May Be Closed
stefan lemieszewski
The devastating impact of "shock therapy" and IMF market-reforms appear to
be taking their toll. The following article suggests that the Hermitage may
have to be closed due to a shortage of funds. I wonder if this improves the
chances for Ukraine (which also doesn't have much of a surplus of funds) to buy
back the Scythian collection of which the bulk originated in Ukraine. Is
selling any of its precious art an unrealistic possible short term solution for
the Hermitage, or any other museum?
Stefan Lemieszewski
__________________________________________________________________________
Chicago Tribune
November 17, 1996
A Crippled Giant
By Elizabeth Williamson. Special To The Tribune.
Over two centuries, it has survived a devastating fire, the Bolshevik
revolution, Nazi bombs and pillaging Soviet bureaucrats. Now, the Russian
government may do what no calamity could: close the State Hermitage Museum.
Impoverished by the war in Chechnya and a budget-busting presidential
campaign, Russia is denying its cultural institutions most government money
voted for them this year, leaving them struggling to survive.
At the Hermitage, one of the world's most important museums of art, it's
easy to see the strain. Foundation cracks and ceiling leaks threaten its
main exhibition space (the Winter Palace) and four adjoining buildings. Heat
is sporadic; some days, visitors can see their breath. Thousands of works
are stuffed in dank basements while a storage building lies half-finished,
with no money to complete it.
"Pictures aren't falling from the walls yet, but it's a catastrophe," says
Mikhail Piotrovsky, Hermitage director.
In early October, Piotrovsky and 21 other museum and theater directors,
actors and musicians took to the stage before a performance of "Antigone" at
the Bolshoi Drama Theater here to deliver a dire message.
As some members of a bundled-up audience wept, they read a proclamation
threatening to close their doors unless the bureaucrats in Moscow deliver
money already appropriated for this year.
"We are afraid that very soon we will have to part with you," said Kiril
Lavrov, actor and art director of the Bolshoi Theater.
Reading an open letter to the government, he said: "The doors of . . .
world-famous museums will close. The Russian National Library will not
provide books. Studies in the St. Petersburg Musical Conservatory, the
Vaganova Academy (where Mikhail Baryshnikov was taught) and the Academy of
Theater Art will halt."
Says Piotrovsky: "The cultural institutions are the most important element
of Russia's face. The (government) doesn't understand that with all this
cutting, we will reach the point where we can't be open."
In the nearly six years since the breakup of the Soviet Union, times have
grown increasingly tough in Russia, and this former imperial capital on the
Baltic Sea has been hard hit. During his free-spending re-election campaign
last May, Russian President Boris Yeltsin swept through St. Petersburg with
a promise to pull the Hermitage from under its growing mountain of debt.
But salvation--like the financial bailouts he promised for industry and
academia--never came. In the scramble for cash, cultural institutions fall
in line behind unpaid soldiers, factory workers, professors and pensioners.
While museums and theaters are left without heat, so too is the state
university. Cries for bricks and mortar go unheard when public hospital
patients must provide their own medicines, bandages and food.
Small wonder, then, that state-supported Russian culture, long a source of
national pride, now seems an unaffordable luxury. Until last month, Moscow
had released only one-third of this year's culture budget of 2.5 trillion
rubles ($460 million). In St. Petersburg, 19 cultural institutions received
only 10 percent of their yearly appropriation.
The Hermitage received a fifth of its $10 million annual allowance. That's
less than some U.S. children's museums spend on overhead in a year. Russian
culture minister Yevgeny Sidorov says that 1996 has been the worst year for
the state-financed art sphere since the Soviet breakup in 1991. Many
observers say it has been the worst year in history.
Museum dates to Catherine
That's certainly true for the Hermitage. Catherine the Great, the rotund,
eccentric czarina who founded the museum in 1764, had a ravenous appetite
for art. Believing that culture was the key to distinction for Russia and
for herself, she spared no expense as she gobbled up entire galleries from
poorer European nobles.
>From Germany came the nucleus of the Hermitage's famed collection of Dutch
and Flemish masters. From France, priceless Italian Renaissance works.
French masters alone filled 50 rooms. In just a decade, Catherine amassed
more than 2,000 canvases.
But paintings weren't enough for an Enlightenment-era empress seeking to
represent the artistic achievements of the entire human race. She bought
thousands of engravings, sculptures, antiquities and coins dating to the
Stone Age. Her passion for gemstones resulted in one of the most prized
collections in the world. To top it all off, she acquired the entire
libraries of Enlightenment philosopher/writers Voltaire and Diderot.
As she surveyed her collection, she wrote to a friend, "All this is admired
by mice and myself." Indeed, the Hermitage didn't open to the public until
1852. But its first crisis had come years before, in 1837, when the Winter
Palace was ravaged by fire. Though the blaze raged for three days,
firefighters miraculously saved most works. Another furious effort and
fistfuls of cash restored it within three years.
The first modern-day challenge came in the 1920s. The new Soviet Union,
seeking hard currency and the favor of Westerners exploiting the empire's
natural resources, sold off works at bargain-basement prices. One
beneficiary was American industrialist Andrew Mellon, who bought 21
masterpieces for $7 million.
Later, in recompense for under-reporting his taxable profits, he donated the
paintings to the U.S. government. The works, which include Van Eyck's
"Annunciation" and Botticelli's "Adoration of the Child," became the
foundation of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Luckily, though, the sheer volume of works offered at auction during these
years ensured that asking prices could not be reached, and many were
returned to the museum.
The next threat came with World War II, and the infamous 900-day "Siege of
Leningrad," as St. Petersburg was called during Soviet times. As Nazi bombs
fell on the Winter Palace, 2,000 staff members huddled in freezing basement
catacombs to protect treasures concealed there. Others packed train cars
with works bound for refuge in the Siberian city of Sverdlovsk (now
Yekaterinburg). The Hermitage remained open in a heartbreaking attempt to
bolster the will of starving citizens.
Then came the '70s, when Soviet officials pillaged the collection for
personal use. Rumor holds that Leonid Brezhnev held a rowdy state dinner
using Hermitage china, and more than a few pieces were broken.
Searching for outside help
Now, for the first time since the Soviet breakup, selling off art to pay the
Hermitage's bills has been rumored in the press. But Piotrovsky, whose
father was the director before him and one of those who defended the
Hermitage during the war, vows the collection is safe.
"The artworks are not in danger. But there has been a principal change in
government policy, (against) financing cultural institutions.
"When I go to Moscow to ask for funds, they ask, `How many exhibitions did
you give abroad last year, and how much did you earn?' "
The answer is $600,000, a drop in the bucket for a museum with an overdue
heating bill of $185,000. "Even while the Soviet government was selling our
collection, they were giving us enough to keep culture in a certain shape,"
he says.
Piotrovsky, 52, an archeologist and Islamic art scholar who speaks five
languages, has been circling the globe to drum up cash. His goal is to wean
the museum from its dependence on state largess. That's not easy; state
funds are intended to provide nearly 90 percent of operating costs.
Piotrovsky has joined forces with the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to launch a worldwide fundraising effort.
They've packaged the museum's many needs into a menu of bite-size projects
for corporate philanthropists. For example, renovation of the buckling south
facade, distinguished by its cracked granite Atlantis sculptures, would cost
$10 million. Restoration of the Hall of St. George, a throne room and
gallery, is priced at $400,000.
So far, Coca-Cola Co. has sponsored a $320,000 art restoration laboratory,
Honeywell Inc. has donated a fire alarm system, and several western European
governments have made contributions toward renovation.
Piotrovsky has organized a development department, which is propagating a
network of "Friends of the Hermitage." The U.S. chapter is based in New York.
Russians are conspicuously absent from the donor rolls. Piotrovsky says "New
Russian" businesses either want unacceptable recognition--their names in
neon over the throne room entrance, for example--or they don't give at all.
A study conducted pro bono by American consultants McKinsey & Co. found that
a growing nouveau riche class in Russia doesn't feel obligated to contribute
to culture. Whereas in the U.S. it isn't uncommon for arts patrons to come
from first-generation wealth, in Russia two generations of deprivation now
means that private support for what the state once provided won't likely
come until a third wealthy generation, or later.
Barely getting by
Consequently the little time Piotrovsky has had between his travels has been
in St. Petersburg, spent in his massive office overlooking the Neva River,
counting rubles beneath a tapestry portrait of Catherine.
These days, he personally counts each day's admissions receipts, applying
them toward the most urgent bills.
"I'm like the owner of a small shop," he laughs. "It was fun for the first
two days, but I never thought we'd live like this."
After last month's protest, the government pledged to free up 70 percent of
the federal money appropriated for culture. If it makes good on that
promise, the money is enough to keep the doors open until the end of the year.
But without the funds needed for maintenance and new facilities, the cracks
in the face of Russian culture will only deepen.
Will the Hermitage close? With a grim smile, Piotrovsky outlines a scenario,
fictional for the moment.
"If we lose our electricity, we can close in the evenings. The Hermitage was
built to be seen in daylight," he says. "Next, we'll stop paying salaries.
We'd lose our security police, but the staff will stay. They can keep the
collection in the cellars again and defend it.
"Perhaps soon," he says, "the Hermitage will only be seen on the World Wide
Web."
The Hermitage's World Wide Web address is http://www.hermitage.ru/
(reposted from Dave Johnson's Russia List)
denfer
How about an international volunteer effort to provide financial
assistance?? A few months back I saw a message asking for people
wordwide to send as much money as they could to an international
effort to rebuild the famous bombed out cathedral in Dresden! Why
can't a similar effort be promoted through the Internet as a
non-profit effort for the Hermitage... with the blessing of Mikhail
Piotrovsky (Hermitage Director)... I would expect that people
worldwide who appreciate art would gladly send the equivalent of a few
dollars to an international account for restoration and preservation
of the Hermitage Museum... ANY THOUGHT ABOUT THIS???
On 18 Nov 1996 22:16:17 GMT, ste...@direct.ca (stefan lemieszewski)
wrote: