Mikhail Piotrovsky: The Experience of Museums for All Times

Today, when efforts are also being made to isolate us, we have something to learn from our predecessor colleagues. First, how to preserve things in acute situations. Secondly, when the cannons speak, the muses do not keep silent. Museums preserve bridges between people; they act as medicine… One more lesson: from within the siege people address those who are outside its ring. We often recall the Hermitage’s experience with the round anniversaries of Navoi and Nizami. They were celebrated in December 1941 to raise the museum’s own spirits and for everyone. Today, with the aid of modern technologies, the world is seeing our museum events. No blockade can impede that.

There is a very important aspect of previous experience – the museum as a laboratory. Zelenova saved the collections and she too sought and obtained the decision that Pavlovsk should be reconstructed. By the logic of present-day restoration, Peterhof, Tsarskoye Selo, Pavlovsk and the centre of Warsaw were not liable for reconstruction. What has been destroyed is not recreated.

A well-founded system was worked out: if documents exist, then reconstruction is possible. It will be exact. Undoubtedly, the decision was bound up with ideological considerations. Behind the post-war reconstruction of our historical monuments lay the idea of showing that we had not been buried. I allude to Warsaw because Pavlovsk was reconstructed first, following which a school of Polish restorers appeared. In the Soviet era, they did a lot of work on our monuments as well.

Today, Zelenova’s experiment in Pavlovsk may also be of significance for devastated Palmyra. An expedition from the Institute of Material Culture is working there. There has been a decision from the Syrian government to restore with our participation the famous Arch of Triumph in Palmyra, images of which can be found in school textbooks. The question arises: how is that to be done if everything has been destroyed? There is strong opposition from people who believe, for various reasons, that the arch should be left untouched.

There is indeed a principle that reconstruction is permissible if 90% of the stones have survived. However, it is possible to use our post-siege experience. Archaeologists are at work in Palmyra. They have sorted through the heaps, cleaned away the previous, not particularly successful, restoration carried out by the French in their time. New information is emerging that may serve as the basis for reconstruction and restoration. A long road of discussions lies ahead.

I have explained repeatedly why Palmyra concerns us. Under Catherine II, Saint Petersburg became known as the Northern Palmyra. Besides that, the problem of reconstructing what was destroyed is familiar to us. The Petersburg museum community should share its experience, not just the purely scholarly kind.

Recently, we have acquired experience that I would call “special operation exhibition”. Now, when the Fabergé exhibition has come back from London – the most nerve-wracking part of the returns – it is worth noting a few points.

In the West, people were describing Russian exhibitions as propaganda of the greatness of Russia, and so calls were made for them to be confiscated. Here in this country, there is a mercantile approach to exhibitions – they are seen as a commodity. Those who brought expensive items took a risk…

Exhibitions are a cultural offensive on Russia’s part. No other country has such an artistic experience and heritage. That is our intellectual wealth, our power. The exhibition of the Morozovs’ collection was like a Russian flag flying above Paris, when all around Russia was being cursed up and down. That exhibition was more than just precious paintings. It was the story of a Russian art collector who, like Shchukin as well, shaped the cultural life of Paris and the evolution of modern art. Matisse was asked whether he would have painted his Dance if Shchukin had not existed. “Who would I have painted it for?” he replied.

The Morozovs’ collection contains Russian and European pictures. A man who possessed great taste collected both. In Paris the paintings hung next to each other. People looked and said that Serov was not worse than Manet.

The exhibition in London was one more confirmation that Fabergé is a phenomenon of Russian culture that had no equal. At the “Grand Tour” exhibition in Milan, about educational journeys to Italy, there were paintings from various world museums. On the cover of the catalogue there was a picture of the Russian Tolstoy family visiting Venice.

In the main, the exhibitions adhered to the agreed timetables. They had state guarantees of timely return and immunity from detention. That is our contribution to the international worldwide legal system. Already for exhibitions in Soviet times, laws were passed that guaranteed exhibitions arriving by exchange and accepted as a symbol of good neighbourly relations would have protection from detention, whatever law suits might be brought. We developed that arrangement further. A law was passed first in Britain, then a new American one, a French one. Later they were refined further. The protection is guaranteed by the state of the receiving party. People tell us that it may not work. Anything can fail to work. Efforts are needed to make it work.

The return of the exhibitions required the efforts of the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Culture, the customs service. The items had to be transported, but the skies are closed. In the Soviet era, things were simple: they sent a plane and collected the load. In the present case, the intervention of our diplomats, government and various bodies was a manifestation of solidarity. As a result, we made people stick to the guarantees, which not everyone wanted to do.

There is one more aspect to this. It became clear, who is a friend and who is not. Not everything is as straightforward as it seems. People who have always smiled, immediately broke off relations. It turned out that museums are subservient. On orders from above, they discontinue cooperation, stating that there is nothing they can do. While businesspeople, who have always said that what they need is not a law but someone’s word of honour, see things through to the end, although things are not easy for them either.

Fresh experience – museums as a model of diplomatic and political relations.

We just opened an exhibition in the Hermitage marking the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Danish artist Eriksen. Denmark has two artists, Eriksen and Tuxen, who are both primarily famous for painting portraits for the Russian court. We intended to hold the Eriksen exhibition jointly with the Danes. We wanted to borrow a few paintings, but we were not given them. The round anniversary of a Danish artist is being celebrated in Russia. They cannot do anything like it in Denmark, because we have the paintings. Nor do they have a Winter Palace, in which to hang the huge portraits of Catherine and her entourage.

We are often scolded for providing guided tours in English. If people are unable to come, let them see that there are many things that only we have. An account of European culture is impossible without the Shchukin and Morozov collections, and also without Eriksen’s paintings that are kept in the Hermitage.

At the Hermitage centre in Vyborg, an exhibition has opened connected with European and Russian hunting traditions. As during the pandemic, we will be showing it not just here. The world today lives to a significant degree “in the clouds”. The global character of a major museum is a presence in various places.

The Book Salon was held on Palace Square. It differs from many of the events that take place on the city’s main square. Palace Square is the city’s “book heart”. If you look around you, you have the library of the naval archives, the military library in the General Staff building, the Hermitage’s imperial and research libraries, the library of the Youth Centre in the General Staff building. Great books are to be found in the buildings surrounding Palace Square.

There is an activity that is not entirely characteristic of a museum – the museum as a public forum. The concept of a museum forum incorporates the Book Salon on the square and the festival of archaeology in the General Staff building. Museum archaeology is displays, expeditions, a romantic aura of mystery. The festival is about the romance of archaeology. It features one-to-one copies of rooms excavated at Stabiae, a town situated next-door to Pompeii. It proved a fine attraction. Around them, there are stories about our celebrated archaeological expeditions.

During the Night of Museums, a tradition we adopted following Europe’s lead, events take place that are again not entirely along museum lines. This time the night was devoted to Peter I. The Menshikov Palace, Peter’s workshop and his Winter Palace came to life with various interactive, theatrical colours. On the Night of Museums, we reminded people that it was 20 years ago that Sokurov made The Russian Ark. That film has many remarkable distinctions. It has gone down in cinema history as the first film shot in a single take. Sumptuous costumes were made for it, like for performances in the imperial theatres. They are kept in the Hermitage and on the Night of Museums an exhibition of costumes from The Russian Ark opened. Costumes in the museum storerooms – ordinary outfits, ball dresses, ones for some historical event, the costumes worn by great actresses – a special topic for discussion on the cusp between museum scholarship and the public forum.

My favourite thesis is that museums are better than the world around. They are a laboratory where various events take place, where recipes are developed that may prove useful beyond the museums’ boundaries.

This material was published in the Sankt-Petersburgskie Vedomosti newspaper, №92 (7175) on 25 May 2022 with the headline “The Experience of Museums for All Times”