Non-Movable Values
// Paintings from Russian museums are not to see London
Russia’s Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency director Mikhail Shvydkoi gathered an emergency briefing in Moscow on Thursday to announce that the “From Russia: French and Russian Masterpieces of Painting 1870-1925” exhibition to be held by Russian museums in London is cancelled. Russian lawyers decided the British authorities’ guarantees to protect the paintings from third-party claims are insufficient. However, British citizens do not lose hope to see the masterpieces from the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, and the Pushkin Museum in the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
Russia’s Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency director Mikhail Shvydkoi immediately disproved insinuations of a political implication of a sudden scandal around seemingly promising and successful museum project: “This story has no relation to the political situation between Great Britain and Russia. In a more acute moment, in summer, we insisted at the Bolshoi Theater’s performance in London.” As Kommersant already wrote yesterday, the exhibition of masterpieces of Russian and French painting from the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, and the Pushkin Museum was to open on January 26 in the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Shvydkoi aptly said that “these paintings are Russia’s calling card; they are printed on stamps and candy boxes”. Repin, Levitan, Vrubel, Kustodiev, Petrov-Vodkin, Malevich, Shagal, Kandinsky – all their best works. Plus selected works by French modernists, all that from the collections of art connoisseurs Shchukin and Morozov, nationalized by the Bolsheviks.
The exhibition called “Bonjour, Russia”, initiated by German company eON and Russia’s Gazprom, is now on display in Dusseldorf. Back at the German preview in early September, visited by Kommersant’s observer [please see the review in the issue of September 15], the exhibition’s curator British art expert Sir Norman Rosenthal from the Royal Academy of Arts announced that after Germany, the exhibition will travel to Great Britain. Moreover, he said the project was supported by Russia’s president and Britain’s Prime Minister. One would think, what other guarantees of the works’ protection and return to Russia are required with the patronage of highest officials.
As Shvydkoi confessed at the briefing, Russia’s Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency began having apprehensions that the paintings might be arrested in Britain due to third-party claims only in late October, after The Guardian’s article [please see No comment in Kommersant’s issue of October 24]. The article’s author reminds that Russian art connoisseurs Shchukin and Morozov, who owned the major part of the exhibition -- works by Gauguin, Picasso, Renoir, Matisse, might have heirs, and those heirs might have claims, while Britain does not have a law “about protection from confiscation”.
In its turn, the British government reminded there exists a law of 1978 “About state immunity” which might serve as a guarantee of preservation and return of foreign cultural property. However, the law’s jurisdiction is limited by the EU countries. On the other hand, part 1 of article 15 of the law reads that “Her Majesty can, by a governmental decree, limit or, depending on circumstances, expand the immunity and privileges to the extent considered necessary by Her Majesty…”. However, it seemed insufficient to lawyers from the Russian culture watchdog and the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Nor was Russia satisfied with a weighty insurance offered for the exhibition, £900 million. “They offered $2 billion of caution money to us; but we don’t need money, we need guarantees of return,” said Shvydkoi.
The official added the only guarantee which can be sufficient would be “a local enactment based on the 1978 law, in accordance to which a ruling of any court in Great Britain to arrest our exhibition’s works of art can be adopted only after the works are returned to Russia. We by no means ask to pass a legislative act, because we understand there is no time for it already.” That is what he wrote in his official letters to Great Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture and Sport James Purnell and Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Russia Sir Anthony Brenton. Answering Kommersant’s questions after the briefing, Shvydkoi became completely frank: “For me, bailiffs are more important than any patronage. Some spiritual auspices do not mean anything in the case. I’ll tell you frankly, I have my own subjective interests here. I’ll be 60 in a year, and I’ll leave work to become a pensioner. I don’t want prosecutors coming and asking me why I let the exhibition go to London where it was arrested…”
Naturally, the Russian culture watchdog’s decision perplexed the exhibition’s curator Rosenthal. In a telephone conversation with Kommersant, he said: “All my Russian friends strongly want this exhibition to take place anyway. I deeply regret it that all these events look like ‘political football’, as we call it here in England. If the exhibition is cancelled indeed, it will simply be a catastrophe, a real Christmas catastrophe.” Russian museums should also be upset if the exhibition in London is cancelled. Moreover, providing paintings for international displays brings a major part of museum profits, and landmark projects like that do not happen very often. An exhibition like that never took place in London, and it is upsetting to miss an opportunity to once more advertise Russian art in the world.
However, the British embassy in Moscow made a quite reassuring statement on Thursday. “The earlier-given assurances, the key one is the letter from Great Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport James Purnell as of December 7, provide more than sufficient guarantees of safety of the works of art taking part in the exhibition,” the embassy repeated. Yet, considering “the exclusive importance of cultural ties between Britain and Russia, the British government will earlier bring into force a new law which is now being discussed in the Parliament. We expect it to be passed in early January 2008, when the Parliament comes back from holidays. And we hope the exhibition opens on January 26, as it was planned.”
Now everything depends on how quickly the British members of the Parliament act.
Maria Mazalova, Milena Orlova, Alla Shenderova, Evgeny Khvostik
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 21, 2007
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