Hermitage plundered from within

Art in America, Oct, 2006 by Stephanie Cash

On July 31, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg posted a statement on its Web site announcing that 221 artworks, valued at $5 million, had been stolen from a storeroom to which only a few people had access. The main culprit was a curator, Larisa Zavadskaya, who died of a heart attack at her desk last year at age 50 as an audit of the repository was beginning. On Aug. 5 the curator's husband, as well as her son, who had once worked at the museum, were arrested as co-conspirators in the scheme and confessed to taking the works over a six-year period. That arrest was followed by the Aug. 11 incarceration of a college teacher who is accused of collaborating with the family and of possibly being the ringleader. Also detained was a local antiquities dealer who was subsequently hospitalized for a nervous condition and a "severe, allegedly self-inflicted, eye wound," according to the St. Petersburg Times.

The missing items include gold and silver crosses and chalices, crystal objects, enamel pieces, icons and jewelry, some of which were gifts to Czar Nicholas II. The museum has posted a list of the missing objects on its Web site. By the end of August, anonymous tips resulted in the recovery of about 15 works, including the most valuable, a 19th-century icon worth $200,000, which was left in a garbage bin; three other works were deposited in train-station storage lockers.

Following a similar announcement by the State Archives of Literature and Art, which is missing an unknown number of drawings by Constructivist architect Yakov Chernikhov, president Vladimir Putin issued sharp words and ordered a complete inventory of the nation's artistic works. That is no easy feat in a country with outdated procedures and equipment, lax security and extremely limited funds. The head of the Russian Cultural Protection Agency told the press that the Hermitage had already begun developing a computerized inventory system, but that it would take 70 years to complete at the current rate. Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky, who was rebuked by Putin, said that a state-of-the-art storage vault had recently been completed on the city's outskirts and that another is in the planning stages. He also called for hiring a full-time security staff and higher pay for museum workers. News of the theft has focused attention on the condition of Russia's museums and the paltry salaries that many staff receive, including top curators.