What makes Saint Petersburg akin to Syrian Palmyra, what has caused the growth of interest in the East and what has gone into the State Hermitage’s large-scale project devoted to Buddhism?
The museum’s director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, spoke about this to the Peterburgsky dnevnik [St Petersburg Diary] Internet news site.
Фото: Дмитрий Фуфаев / «Петербургский дневник»
– Mikhail Borisovich, the “Two Palmyras” exhibition (6+) held recently again drew attention to the fate of that unique site. This is a subject especially dear to your heart.
– Of course, everything that happens there affects me greatly. I am constantly taking part in expeditions and was there very recently. We were copied from Palmyra, which is one of the chief models for Classical architecture. When Saint Petersburg was being built, the foremost city in the world when it came to aesthetics was Palmyra. It was a very beautiful city standing amid the desert. And the powerful metaphor that was born at that time – that Saint Petersburg is the Northern Palmyra – is more important than all the others. Venice of the North is like an attempt to fit in, but there is a sense of kinship that connects us to Palmyra. We are the Northern Palmyra and became so thanks to Catherine the Great, whom people compared to Zenobia, the great female ruler of Palmyra. And our city got compared to Palmyra because that arose unexpectedly from the sands, while we arose unexpectedly from the marshes… That makes us akin.
– What do you think, why have we now started to look more intently towards the East, to which you have been devoted for so many years?
– The East is not just for me. The East, and the West too, is important for all of us. We live in Russia. It’s a country that is simultaneously both Eastern and Western. All this talk about everyone today looking more often to the East is true only for a portion of our society, who have suddenly recollected that the East exists.
– Blok back in his time wrote: “Yes, we are Scythians! Yes, Asiatic are we!”
– The East has always been a part of our cultural orientation – and we are indeed the East.
– It is with the East specifically that the forthcoming exhibition devoted to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Nicholas Roerich is connected. What will it be presenting?
– This is a large-scale intermuseum project “The Fiery Stronghold” (0+). It will open in the halls of the General Staff building on 20 November. Museums from Russia, Mongolia, India, Azerbaijan and other countries will be participating. We will be trying to encompass the whole of Nicholas Roerich’s legacy, which is indeed vast. Not everyone is aware, for example, that he collected paintings including “small Dutch masters”, and that collection is today in our keeping in the Hermitage. The exhibition brings together some very diverse institutions. We know, after all, how differently Roerich is seen by people in different parts of the world. We will be trying to show a host of highly diverse facets and to provide, in as far as it is possible, a complete museum picture of his legacy. It is a huge exhibition – part of the major “Dialogue of Cultures. East – West” project that the State Hermitage is conducting.
– Where, in your opinion, is such attention to Buddhism coming from today?
– People are taking a great interest in the art and ideas of Buddhist around the world. It was awfully fashionable in the Soviet Union too. That has been passed down to the present day. Many consider that Buddhism provides a way out of the problems that exist. In March we opened an exhibition of a sculpture returned after restoration – of the Buddha Maitreya, who served as a guide to Roerich. That was an event with a multitude of significances – part of our general mission as a museum, and of the dialogue between East and West.
In Ulan-Ude recently we opened an exhibition of masterpieces of Buryat Buddhist art from the Hermitage. Previously we presented a bust of Catherine II to the abbot of the Aninsky Datsan in Buryatia, Lama Legtsog Darizhapov. Additionally, there are plans for a major exhibition of the Hermitage’s Buddhist stocks in the Hermitage itself, joint projects with the Saint Petersburg datsan and theatrical mysteries.
– In recent year, the Theatre-Laboratory in the Hermitage has put on two productions –Flora and Sacred Spring. What awaits visitors this year?
– As part of our established theatrical productions, in September we will be presenting the mystery The Golden Light Sutra (12+). It’s a new joint project between the Hermitage and the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts, which takes its title from one of Buddhism’s main texts. The Golden Light Sutra will become part of the Hermitage’s enormous Buddhist project, which is indeed very needed and important. Because we have a fairly superficial knowledge about such things. The project should from a level of everyday Buddhism draw attention to serious reflections on Buddhism which is a part of Saint Petersburg culture.
