Reshaping old museums for the new Russia

Art in America, Feb, 1998 by Lee Rosenbaum

Even the tradition-bound Hermitage is going contemporary. It is planning a major Rothko show, and last year it displayed bronzes by German sculptor Otto Waldemar, who attended the opening. "I would love to have an exhibition of American Abstract Expressionists," confided Piotrovski, who is compiling an acquisitions wish-list of 10 pictures by "the 10 most important artists of the 20th century after 1914." Declining to identify the likely candidates, he did say that Magritte and Pollock had made the cut. A show of Klimt and Schiele, drawn from the Sabarsky collection of New York, and a Magritte show, drawn from the Menil Collection, Houston, are being discussed but have not been finalized at this writing.

The most widely publicized instance of the Russian museums' new freedom is their ability to display and candidly discuss the fate of "trophy art" taken by the Soviet Union from former Nazi territory after World War II. The Hermitage still exhibits highlights from the landmark "Hidden Treasures" show of 1995, and Piotrovski argues that the ultimate fate of these works should rest with museum professionals, not Russian and German government officials. "Good will is what's most important, and that's the one thing politicians don't have," he asserted. Noting that Russians regard these works as appropriate compensation for "what Germany did to Russia -- destroying our cultural heritage deliberately," he declared that "the ideal solution is exchange -- fifty-fifty by numbers or by quality of pictures.... We can decide with our German colleagues how to go about it, because first it should belong to humanity."

Five-Year Plans

The growing pains experienced by Russian museums in the post-Soviet era will ease when cultural institutions' administrative and economic structures readjust to the sweeping changes that have already transformed Russia's political and business spheres. Everyone agrees that museums must become more self-supporting, but legal frameworks and museum policies have not Net fully adapted to the new need. Museums need the legal authority to establish endowments, and their donors Deed the incentive of more attractive tax deductions for contributions -- two objectives being heavily promoted by Piotrovski. Also ripe for change is the Russian government's practice of taking a hefty cut from museum donations. Nina Diefenbach, chief development officer of the Metropolitan Museum and a participant in the Met-Hermitage exchange, reported that the Russian treasury takes at least 20 percent off the top of foreign private contributions to museums, unless they are made through the "Friends" groups. (Despite these disincentives to philanthropy, the Hermitage managed to raise 21 percent of its budget through its own efforts in 1996.) Piotrovski is also campaigning for a national lottery, based on the British model, to funnel funds to culture. Meanwhile, the city of St. Petersburg has asked cultural institutions to draw up five-year projections for their budgets and programs, in preparation for an announcement planned for this May of a city-wide economic development scheme.