Many changes are taking place in our life. We ponder what and how things will be in future. In particular, a question often raised in the museum sphere is “What will happen with exhibitions?”
Exhibitions first appeared in the 19th century; in the main, though, they are a feature of the 20th. Right now, the exchange of exhibitions is complicated by more than just the situation connected with Ukraine. An exhibition could be sequestered anywhere at all. Legal actions are going on in the world over what belongs to whom.
Organizing an exhibition means transport, insurance, the transfer of money through banks. When planes are carrying paintings, it is always a worry that something might happen to them. You need to get things to a place of safety, to be sure that the plane will make it there, that the bank will not refuse to transfer money, and so on. Those matters need to be settled. Perhaps something will change for countries friendly to us.
International exchange is an indicator of the political climate, a mark of trust by which it is possible to judge that the situation is changing. Like a canary with its sensitivity to the composition of the air is an indicator of safety in a mine.
In its time we held an exhibition for which we received from the National Gallery in Washington Titian’s Venus with a Mirror than had been sold to the USA from Russia in the 1930s. Presidents Putin and Bush visited the Hermitage. I permitted myself a joke, saying that the fact that the painting was here was a greater sign of trust between our two countries than an agreement on nuclear weapons. They concurred.
Back then, the controversial item came and went back again. We have not had any exhibitions with the USA for fifteen years now. There they refused to give the guarantees that Europeans were giving. Those guarantees helped our exhibitions to come back from France when the latest events began. Money in the banks was getting frozen, but the exhibitions were returned.
Today the exchange of exhibitions is impossible between many countries. There are other forms of museum life.
It needs to be said straight out: we are living under blockade conditions. We better than anyone else know what that means. We are employing the experience that we have, that is mirroring and demonstrativeness. Within the encirclement of the siege, Shostakovich’s music sounded in the Philharmonia. The paintings were evacuated, exhibitions impossible, but in the Hermitage celebratory evenings were held in memory of Navoi and Nizami.
An example of mirroring – in Turin a discussion exhibition has opened devoted to Leonardo’s painting La Gioconda. Many people reckon that the picture [the “Isleworth Mona Lisa”] was painted before the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. The exhibition is an interesting one, with materials about the restoration, research on Leonardo’s techniques. We are holding a comparable exhibition-discussion – “New Secrets of Leonardo’s Paintings”. It acquaints visitors with the latest discoveries in the study of the legacy of one of the greatest artists in world history. Neither exhibition reaches definitive conclusions.
We are planning a major exhibition of Flemish still lifes. A large exhibition of Flemish drawings is due to open in Oxford.
The latest technologies help us to demonstrate what we do. We are constructing a Celestial Hermitage in the cloud. We have our exhibitions there. People look at them, some with interest, others with malice. The Internet allows us to see each other.
When pondering the future, we need to take a close look at just what exhibitions are in general. The main attraction of the Hermitage is the displays. Exhibitions are situated within the Hermitage. They do not have a separate entrance or separate tickets. That is a gift to those who come to the museum regularly.
Temporary exhibitions form part of the hierarchy of showing that we have constructed. It begins in Staraya Derevnya with the open-storage facilities. Then come the Reserve Galleries in the Winter Palace, where paintings are displayed almost as in the repository. Then come the galleries with alternating displays. In the Gallery of Graphic Art, the exhibitions are changed every four months.
The following stage in the hierarchy is the permanent displays. They are for those coming to the Hermitage for the first time. We recently opened a few halls of the refurbished display of China at the time of the Qing dynasty, who ruled contemporarily with the Romanovs. The display is a reminder that China is an immense cultural range.
The hierarchy also includes exhibitions in cities with Hermitage satellites. These are all different ways of showing the collections, different levels of access to them. They combine with one another, form part of the museum’s overall exhibition strategy, which changes depending on the cultural situation in the world.
Today there are three directions to our strategy. The first is Russia with its imperial history. The exhibition “The Artistic Legacy of the Pomorian Old Believers” is an account of the religious alternatives that existed in our country. Alongside is the exhibition “Russian Style in Art. From Nicholas I to Nicholas II”. We are preparing to show it in Oman. That is one of the friendly countries to which, we hope, it will soon become possible to take exhibitions.
Visitors are told about the Russian Empire in the exhibition “Catherine I” in Yekaterinburg, a city named in honour of that empress. An exhibition of “Banners of the Orenburg Cossack Host” will be opening at the Hermitage satellite in Orenburg.
The second direction in the exhibition strategy is East and West, the dialogue between them. An exhibition of the Belle Époque is in preparation, telling about France and Europe in the late 19th century. At Staraya Derevnya there will be a permanent display of Russian and French costume. An exhibition devoted to the art of that same period will travel to Omsk.
Our exhibitions are like icebergs: they have a range of meanings. The exhibition devoted to the archaeologist Piotr Kozlov will be an account of the great traveller who uncovered the extinct city of Khara-Khoto in Central Asia, in the Gobi Desert. Kozlov made some major archaeological discoveries. He was, however, an officer of the General Staff and his travels were also reconnaissance operations. In Soviet times, Kozlov created the first joint archaeological expedition with Mongolia, the documents of which laid out who was to receive what finds. Arguments lie ahead over whether the share out was proper.
One more direction in the Hermitage’s exhibition strategy is the presentation of a single masterpiece.
Previously we would bring in one picture at a time from museums around the world. Now we show masterpieces that are born under the restorers’ hands. In the General Staff building, you can see Jan van den Hecke’s Sumptuous Still Life. In the Winter Palace we are presenting for the first time a little-known masterpiece of the early 17th-century Flemish school – Tobias Verhaecht’s painting of The Tower of Babel.
Those are rational things. There are also irrational ones, though. Previously people used to visit the Hermitage in crowds or singly. Now a lot come in pairs – and there are also exhibitions about pairs.
The exhibition of Spanish art “From Gothic to Goya” from the State Pushkin Museum tells about how the collection was formed. It is also about how pictures were removed from the Hermitage to benefit other museums. Pairs of items were separated. In this exhibition some pairs have been reunited. A discussion arose over whether the artist painted them as a pair. In museums works are often hung alongside each other, they settle in together and become a pair.
The separation of paintings is a painful topic. Such pairs are known. One large Canaletto is in the Pushkin Museum, another in the Hermitage. Poussin’s paintings about biblical battles in the chronicle of the conquest of the Holy Land have also been broken apart.
Previously we shared paintings with the Pushkin Museum, now we hold exhibitions together. Joint projects did exist earlier, but they lacked such inventiveness, things specific to each of the museums, a host of nuances. “Diderot’s Salons” turned out completely different in Moscow and with us. People enjoyed viewing both exhibitions.
There is one other variant on exhibition pairs. Sometimes we present replicas of past exhibitions. That kind of approach is also a part of museum life, and example of how to make flexible use of one’s resources. The Historical Museum held an exhibition of costumes – an echo of the one that was in Amsterdam. A new version of the “Ball in the Winter Palace” exhibition is in preparation.
Playing with pairs gives pleasure to the museum and the viewer. It is testimony to changes in museum life. The complexity to which we are constantly appealing makes this life interesting.
The exhibition “Furniture Rarities of the Demidov Family. History and Restoration” also features a pair – a couple of chests-of-drawers that Demidov, the great proprietor of the Urals and Siberia, commissioned for Catherine [the Great]. They were never presented. One went off to Italy and has now been purchased and brought back to Russia by a collector. The other came into the Hermitage much altered, without its legs, without Catherine’s monogram, without its metal embellishment. The question arises: is it possible to recreate it as it was? According to strict restoration practice – not really: an object should retain the traces of its subsequent history.
We are provoking a discussion, as in the exhibition about Leonardo. If the discussion ensues, that makes the exhibition even more attractive.
This material was published in the Sankt-Petersburgskie Vedomosti newspaper, №55 (7631) on 27 March 2024 with the headline “Playing with Pairs”.
