The State Hermitage Museum: Information

Not Everyone Liked Venus Either
An article in Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti
Issue No. 252, December 27, 2012

The year is drawing to a close, and it is time to discuss its results. The general session of the Academy of Sciences took place just a few days ago. We talked about the results of the Year of History. I presented a report on science in the Hermitage. On the one hand, I talked about the discoveries our archeologists, historians and art scholars had made. On the other hand, I mentioned a long-standing problem: science is not one of our Museum’s main functions. There’s a generally accepted idea that museums are places for recreation, service institutions.

Then there was a meeting of the Presidential Council for Culture. The participants discussed the problem of restoration. The situation is quite difficult, there are many problem areas. Almost no high-quality restoration programs are available. We are losing the restoration school and all the applicable criteria. All this time I have been trying to explain that landmarks are perishing, and calling upon people not to touch them. We have to look for ways to preserve small towns with their local heritage sites. Our economy should be based not on fighting developers so that they don’t touch our ancient heritage but on the ways to restore buildings and preserve them. In Milan you can only spend 20 minutes to admire Leonardo’s Last Supper. These time limitations are seen not as obstacles but as conditions for preserving this artwork.

Summarizing the results of this year, I cannot avoid talking about the most regrettable of problems. Many people have been bewildered by what is happening in St. Petersburg, the cultural capital of Russia. Some people prohibit reading Nabokov’s Lolita, then FC Zenit fans publish a strange provincial manifesto that separates St. Petersburg from the rest of the world. Then comes the scandal with the End of Joy exhibition of the Chapman brothers, two British artists, at the Hermitage. These protests supposedly come from the general public. Some articles have been published that decry St. Petersburg’s provinciality.

The provincial spirit has penetrated the entire country. It is manifested in the fear of openness, the willingness to live as in a shell, and fierce attacks on all challenges. One typical example is the prohibition of adoption of Russian children by American families in response to the Magnitsky Act. People have been discussing, in all seriousness, whose international law is stronger. We are not up to this challenge. For international ties, we have to work actively, impose our will, and not simply keep our presence visible. We need to show that Russia is strong, powerful, and interesting.

When you are provincial, you feel week, lonely, and inferior to others. Other people are normal, you say to yourself, and we are backward, our salaries are low. So we keep feeling sorry for ourselves all the time. Or else we become overly arrogant, we say we are better than anyone else, so everything has to be our way or the highway. We do not understand that the world is complex, and that there are different opinions out there. You cannot impose your vision on others. Yelling and screaming do not work in the 21st century, soft power and unobtrusive persuasion do.

When people call St. Petersburg provincial, they are oversimplifying things. Someone has offered to announce different cities across the country as cultural capitals of Russia, as it is done in Europe, and to make St. Petersburg the first cultural capital among them. This wonderful idea got into the hands of people who do not understand the concept and think only about money. As soon as someone said that St. Petersburg was a cultural capital, others started asking where the money for the project was. So the idea was misunderstood. We have to realize that people may interpret words in different ways.

There’s just one capital city. St. Petersburg has its own individual character, and people must understand it. Unlike Moscow, St. Petersburg often produces special events and faces special challenges. When you hear people say “oh, how terrible,” they usually refer to these challenges. In Moscow money solves many problems, they have much more money there than in any other Russian city. So they do not really have any conflicts of ideas there. For us in St. Petersburg, the picture is different.

All of the trials and tribulations of modern art can serve as examples. Provincial beliefs triumph and people believe that everyone should follow their understanding of the world. This is a big problem. It must be treated with professionalism. And we do have problems with professionalism in this country, too.

So there’s this uproar: how dare you exhibit these British artists in the Hermitage? We can do that, we have every right to. The museum is not a place for entertainment or enjoyment; it is a place of education and guidance. Like any educational institution, museums choose what they want to show, decide how they want to teach people and guide them. And then museum professionals clash with amateurs.

The same can be said of the Milonov act on propaganda of homosexuality. The attitude to homosexuals is a very complex international problem. LGBT rights are being discussed on par with freedom of speech issue. And then we have this law adopted in St. Petersburg, of all places, with a big scandal.

History repeats itself. The trial of Joseph Brodsky is more important for history than any other processes. Dissidents were tried for something they had done. The case against Brodsky was absurd.

Then there was this horrible Zhdanov period in the history of the city. The authorities had many people to fight. St. Petersburg was home to Zoschenko and Akhmatova, who created their own poetry and prose, independent and world-oriented, inside the body of Soviet literature.

Leningrad survived the blockade and the Leningrad Trials. There were many horrors around us, but here we had a fight of ideas, a fight of good against evil.

One remarkable event that stands out is the October Revolution. In Moscow there were cannons firing on the Kremlin. And all we remember is one purely symbolic cannon shot from the Aurora, and the theatrical storming of the Winter Palace. The whole thing was symbolic. And then we had the December Uprising of 1825 in St. Petersburg. It was the city of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, the city of palace coups.

All of these explosions and fights are not our city’s disgrace; it is how things stand here. We mustn’t worry about being surrounded by bigots; we must understand that the fate of Russian culture is being decided here. And culture is not the only problem area.

The Prosecutor’s Office got 200 identical letters against the Chapman exhibition in the Hermitage. This was the technology used to make Orange Revolutions. The law on extremism had been intended to prevent fascism. But, as we soon found out, it could easily be turned against art. Changes in the country can be sudden. St. Petersburg has become a battleground once again, as it has many times before; all of the museum issues are just one side of the story. St. Petersburg intellectuals must play their role because they have their rights.

People have been discussing what is going on with Gerard Depardieu. He gave up his French citizenship because he was unhappy with the high taxes. To a certain extent, Mr. Depardieu opposes an army of officials who live on the money of rich French citizens. French state officials have high salaries, even in junior positions. We, too, have many state, and non-state, establishments where people get lots of money for their office work. Depardieu is a great actor. So he can decide where he wants to live. He had paid his taxes, and he is right when he says: “Mr. Minister, who do you think you are?” His high reputation is not up for discussion.

Professionals never interfere in other people’s business. They simply provide an opportunity for people to see and understand what is good and what is bad. Museums organize exhibitions, and it is just funny to discuss the fact that some people like them, and others don’t. For some people, the ideal woman is the Rubens woman, and others have a different understanding of this ideal. The women in Rubens art are more indecent than any other contemporary art. We know what happened when Peter the Great brought The Venus of Tauria to St. Petersburg. He placed it in a grotto, put guards next to it, and made people go and see it. It was a revolution. A naked woman! Many people were disgusted. Some people have mentioned that this was against the laws of the church. Not at all, it was just against popular opinion. People were not used to seeing things like this, it was considered indecent. Many of the things that Peter did in St. Petersburg happened in Moscow, too. But there it had never led to any problems. In St. Petersburg, every of Peter’s ideas turned into a real fight, an opposition.

We should not complain about living in a city of bigots. We have genetically sharp perception. The events that are taking place right now are important for our future regardless of the outcome. We must understand that there is no such thing as absolute truth. There are different points of view and then there is professional opinion. We can find understanding if we respect professionalism. Even if this should contradict the primitive interpretation of the concept of democracy.