The State Hermitage Museum: Information

Keeping Tabs on Our Building
Article in Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti
Issue N 174, 12 September 2012

Alexander Sokurov recently said that the destruction of Rogov’s House in our city is the same as murder. I agree with him entirely.

Rogov’s House is an ordinary building, but a building from Pushkin’s time. People have often said that it is the ordinary buildings that preserve St. Petersburg. Architectural masterpieces are rare in our city, it is the ensemble which is valued.

What’s happening on Vladimir Square and nearby is one of the greatest architectural crimes of our times. It makes your heart bleed. A terrible, tasteless business centre has been impudently put up opposite the cathedral. How can we protect Delvig House? The square has a special historical aura that had been formed before our time. For that reason it is madness to do anything else here.

I will not go into historical subtleties – whether a building is protected or not, or when they came under protection, or how the protection was revoked... Legal fetishes are the law – the courts don’t work for us. We see how easy it is to manipulate all of this. There is no hope that these meticulously made laws can protect anything.

There are important principles, some of which are clearly specified. I have in mind height restrictions. For St. Petersburg the height restriction is an ancient and stable regulation – to build no higher than the cornice of the Winter Palace, this must be maintained without exception. All the rest can and must be discussed.

We are accustomed to think that preserving architecture is a long-standing problem which is only relevant to us. But the thing is, it happens everywhere else. It is interesting to compare the discussions on this issue here and abroad.

A useful exchange of opinions has been going on for several years already in a Russian-German forum, the St. Petersburg Dialogue. Special meetings have been held, dedicated to the preservation of avant-garde architecture. It seems to me that thanks to this comparison with the Germans, something has changed in our ways in that respect. A good dialogue is taking place on the use of industrial buildings. In Germany this has worked out quite well. The exchange of information is a good thing for both parties. At least we have started to pay more attention to industrial architecture, new perspectives have arisen, plans and projects have been developed.

Over the course of several years, the Petersburg Dialogue has compared the problems of reconstructions, restoration and development of the State Hermitage Museum and the Museum Island in Berlin.

The island on the Spree River unites a complex of buildings, built from 1830 to 1930: The Old Museum, New Museum, Old National Gallery, Bode Museum and the Pergamon Museum. Since 1999, the ensemble has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Museum problems for Berlin are political. The city was divided, the museums were destroyed, some items were taken away. After the war reconstruction work was done on both sides of the Berlin Wall.

When Germany was reunited they slowly began to unite the collections and consider how to unite the museums. Our German colleagues are restoring demolished buildings. It is interesting how they are doing it. The New Museum stood in ruins for a long time. They restored it, but in such a way that the ruins are visible. In my opinion, too much is visible. It is noticeable that they are crossing an emotional line.

There are other examples. On the island they decided to construct a modern transition which joins the Pergamon Museum, Old Museum, New Museum and Bode Museum. One must say that it is a serious invasion of museum space. In Germany everything is widely discussed and museum visitors voted for that project. The castle is being restored, which was destroyed during the time of the German Democratic Republic, on the site of the Republic Palace.

It is important to remember that none of this would have come to pass, if in its own time the State Hermitage Museum had not transferred the National Gallery, the Pergamon Altar, the Egyptian Museum and many others. In truth it doesn’t pay to think that we had all of it. A large part of the exponents remained in Germany.

With the arrangement of collections on Museum Island some problems have arisen. The main picture gallery in Berlin bears the name Wilhelm von Bode, the famous museum scholar, who founded it. He visited the State Hermitage Museum, he used the very same concept for his own museum whereby he displayed paintings and sculptures together. When they were restoring the museum, they only placed sculptures there. Then they decided all the same to return to the principle of the 19th century, which we at the State Hermitage Museum nourish and cherish.

Museum specialists offered to close the picture gallery at the Cultural Forum and transfer it to the Bode Museum to show sculptures with pictures. The collection of the picture gallery grew and no longer fitted in the Bode Museum. To unite them they needed to build yet another building.

And then came the voice of the public: why change anything? Leave it all like this, otherwise everything would be closed down for several years. The average German would not be able to look at these masterpieces. A powerful opposition developed. Arguments about excessive waste of money were made, people said the architectural standards were disregarded...
What our Berlin colleagues will do, we shall discuss at our next St. Petersburg Dialogues seminar, which will take place in October. We have agreed to look at the problem more widely, compare what is taking place with Museum Island in Berlin and the General Staff building on Palace Square. Both here and there we have not only the expansion of museums but also the rebuilding of their structure. The island is the centre of Berlin. Palace Square is the centre of St. Petersburg. Our colleagues have published a booklet and they told us what their idea of the museum was and let us see if that idea was right.

The Bode Museum has been restored. I have seen it. What it should be, depends not on old architecture alone. Architecture must adapt. It cannot remain standing there as it was, and its former tasks no longer exiSt. How do you fit it in? Some are altered to hotels, others to museums. In either case, there are rules and restrictions. But with museums the result is better, because they do not think about profit. We stand united with our colleagues. We will actively participate in the discussion, so that the Berlin public accepts the Bode Museum expansion plan for the return of the style and spirit of the nineteenth century.

Public opinion can vary. Here we have a reason to return to Palace Square. There are the preconceptions of modern architects, builders and the public. These notions are somewhat illusionary and embellished. You have to understand the shortcomings of our society and move on, instead of building ideals.

I will touch on a story that has just caused a stir. Long before the press and the public, I noticed the skylights on the roof of the General Staff. As part of the reconstruction the courtyards are being covered and the skylights which had been put in under Rossi are being restored, as well as the new ones. In short, we are doing everything necessary to display the paintings. Architects conceived a complex system for how light is to enter the building and be dispersed. If it works, it will be one of the major achievements of the reconstruction of the building.

We take the role of the State Hermitage Museum in the building seriously, although we do not have a relationship with it. Money comes from the World Bank and the organisation that controls it. There is an organisation that conducted the tender. Finally, there is the Ministry of Culture, which is engaged in the construction work. The State Hermitage Museum has to get the finished building. In order not to repeat history with the second stage of the Mariinsky Theatre, we decided to watch the construction. Each week workshops take place with difficult discussions about what must be included or removed... When it appeared that skylights even in their temporal version would rise slightly above the roof of the General Staff, we tried to understand how it happened.

I should observe that our construction is monitored more carefully than the second stage of the Mariinsky Theatre. One paper wrote that the State Hermitage Museum is always surrounded by scandal. The public creates the scandals. There were once lively discussions about the old crack in the wall of the General Staff building. It became more severe a few years ago when a new building was constructed close to the General Staff building in violation of all possible regulations. We were going to sue. Nobody paid any attention to the building.

Later someone saw the elevations above the General Staff building. The Leningrad Trading House towers above, and domes are being added to some other buildings. They are visible, but nobody pays any particular attention to them.

And in the case of the skylights there is no scandal. The temporary cover is noticeable, for example, from the side of Alexander’s Garden, this is true. The architects, it seems, looked at everything. In reality things don’t always turn out the way they were planned. For example, it turned out that the planned materials were not available or that they didn’t have Russian certification.

The builders too are not perfect. A wonderful company is working for us, but it is influenced by the 94th law, which dictates that the tender goes to the bidder offering the lowest price. The result is not quite what was planned by the architects on paper. It is the real world of contemporary construction work.

What will we do with the skylights? There is a solution – to reduce the angle of inclination. We have conducted several experiments. The level of skylights will be lowered. We try to do everything that is possible in reality. Without shouting and wailing.

Architects and builders are not perfect – nor are civic building activists. Among them are some unbalanced residents. There are also many people talking about things they take for granted, and it is impossible to do anything without their intervention. The public’s opinion both here and in Berlin should be taken with some reserve. Anyway, as we say on the State Hermitage Museum website - we appreciate your attention.