It seems that M.B. Piotrovsky did not answer questions about where the disappeared valuables had gone and why the collections of masterpieces went to exhibitions without insurance.
And in general, did the originals or fakes come back from the “exhibitions”? Examination, as far as we know, no one conducted?
We need a selective, and then a total check in 2013 of the Hermitage for the safety of masterpieces and their authenticity, and at the same time all the financial and economic activities of the management of the above-mentioned museum.
After that, it will be clear in what tone and on which topical topics you can talk with this strange director.
(comment by BigNode user)
P.S. - JOKE ON THE TOPIC:
DYNAMITE STORIES
"GOD HIMSELF ORDERED TO STEAL",
or
Temptations of the terrorist
The lackeys [of the Winter Palace], and the palace servants in general, were really "hard-boiled." From the surviving reports of A.I. Zhelyabov and S.N. Khalturin, it is known that upon entering the Winter Palace, Khalturin was struck by the mores and customs of his new comrades. An amazing disorder reigned in the management of the palace. The rampant theft of ministers exceeded all probability. Khalturin's palace colleagues arranged feasts at which dozens of their acquaintances freely passed without control and supervision. While from the main entrances to the palace there was no free access to the highest-ranking persons, the back doors were open day and night for any tavern acquaintance of the last palace servant. Often visitors stayed and spend the night in the palace.
The general theft of palace property forced Khalturin to steal food so as not to appear suspicious. Twice he stole porcelain dishes. However, the servants claimed that God himself ordered them to steal, because, for example, palace lackeys received only 15 rubles a month ...
Theft in the palace reached such proportions that Khalturin (in a conversation with A.A. Kvyatkovsky, member of Narodnaya Volya) wondered why the almost unguarded crown of Catherine II, which was located on the first floor of the palace, was not stolen, which was estimated at a million rubles ... “Like all these crowns and scepters plundered - I’ll never know?”, - said Khalturin.
Preparing the explosion, Khalturin demanded from the Executive Committee of "Narodnaya Volya" assistance with various intelligence information, and most importantly, supplying him with dynamite.
Pavel Kann.
Walk from the Summer Palace to the Winter Palace
along the Palace embankment of St. Petersburg.
SPb., "Petrogradsky and Co.", 1996, pp. 180-181.
WHY THE DIRECTOR OF THE HERMITAGE M. PIOTROVSKY,
SPECIALIST IN ISLAM AND THE KORAN,
DOES NOT ALLOW CHRISTIANS
TO PRAY IN THE CHURCHES OF THE WINTER PALACE?
It has long been known that in the bowels of the State Hermitage Museum, subordinate to the Ministry of Culture of Russia, in the deep underground there is a community of Orthodox Christians, as in the days of the persecutor of Christians, the sadistic Roman emperor Nero, who, on legal grounds - by decree of the President of Russia - demands to be released from "worldly exhibitions" temples of the official residence of the Emperors of Russia (homes of the heads of the Russian state - emperors and empresses) - the Winter Palace.
Christians urgently ask to fulfill the Decrees of the President on the return of the objects of Christian worship to the Russian Orthodox Church. Director of the State Hermitage Museum Mikhail Piotrovsky does not pay attention to the legitimate demands of the Orthodox, he does not want to comply with the Decrees of the President of Russia.
Why?
As a former hereditary atheist communist?
Or for some other reason?
Or citizen Piotrovsky M.B., who has ascended “very high”, has no time to pay attention to the “standing below” Orthodox Petersburgers, for he (already or still?) is the General Director of the State Hermitage Museum, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, full member of the Academy of Arts, full member of the Academy of Humanities, Head of the Department of Museum Affairs and Monument Protection, Professor of the Faculty of Philosophy of St. Petersburg University, Professor of the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg University, Head of the Department of History of the Ancient East of the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg University, Dean of the Oriental Faculty Petersburg University, Chairman of the Union of Museums of Russia, member of the International Council of Museums, member of the Presidium of the Russian Committee of UNESCO, laureate of the Prize of the President of the Russian Federation in the field of literature and art, and so on and so forth and so on ...
But for the time being, he, M.B. Piotrovsky, is not yet a museum emperor! more and more posts...
Is it possible that the former atheist communist comrade, and now Mr. Mikhail Piotrovsky, is so brilliant that while officially in the responsible state service of the General Director of the State Hermitage Museum, he can simultaneously perform responsible work in other positions - dozens of times more, than the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin himself?
Does the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Rostislavovich Medinsky know that one of the museum directors subordinate to him, wearing his invariable scarf around his neck and personifying the ideological trend of “elegant scarfism with short lean Caucasian legs” in Russian political thought, can simultaneously, in addition to the general directorate in the State Hermitage Museum, to perform so many other functions and memberships?
It is high time for the famous Russian statesman, chief sanitary doctor of Russia, Gennady Grigoryevich Onishchenko, to check why Mr. Piotrovsky does not protect his health, scrupulously performing so many important duties at the same time. Surely this violates the Labor Code of the Russian Federation ...
Doesn't Mikhail Borisovich as the General Director of the State Hermitage Museum, being an "editor" and "compiler", the author of "prefaces" and "afterwords", not receive any money? Perhaps he passes them on to pensioners - caretakers of the halls, junior researchers and employees of the Hermitage, who receive a meager salary? Give them a list of those blessed!
But why is this happening?
Is he a very rich man?
The fiftieth anniversary of the reign (1964-2014) of the “Piotrovsky House” in the State Hermitage Museum is just around the corner, about which the doctoral cantor has written a special book, The Hermitage. Piotrovskie” (St. Petersburg, 2004, 170 pp.), timed to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the removal from the post of Director of the Hermitage in 1964, the outstanding archaeologist Mikhail Illarionovich Artamonov (1898-1972).
Artamonov's resignation took place “thanks to” the exhibition activities of the notorious Shemyakin Mishka, who is now abroad, a provocateur from art (that was his name in Saigon).
As is known, professor and academician Piotrovsky was not involved in the death of Larisa Zavadskaya, who robbed the funds of the State Hermitage Museum (this was proved by the court). He, being the general director of the State Hermitage Museum, is not guilty of the death of the thief Larisa Zavadskaya at the working museum post!
A thief or thieves stole exhibits worth hundreds of millions of rubles from the funds of the State Hermitage Museum. Piotrovsky M.B., director of the State Hermitage Museum, professor and correspondent member, for this largest theft in the history of the Hermitage, which will soon, in 2014, turn a quarter of a millennium, suffered only a reprimand from the talkative on various occasions and occasions on the Kultura channel » former Minister of Culture Mikhail Shvydkoy.
By the way, a former relative of Piotrovsky M.B. Dementyeva Natasha (the former wife of his cousin) was the Minister of Culture under Yeltsin and distinguished herself when Yeltsin buried the so-called “Yekaterinburg remains”, which are not recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church as the authentic bodies of the family of the last Russian emperor.
One of Natasha's deputies was Misha, by the name of Shvydkoi, who swung chairs with Natasha, who, already a minister, announced to Piotrovsky M.B. for the "exploits" of the thief Larisa Zavadskaya, only a reprimand.
But after all, for similar offenses (oversight of theft), Minister of Defense Serdyukov not so long ago lost his high place ... M.B. Piotrovsky is “sitting”! Let's add still...
"World Citizen of St. Petersburg", supporting a small clan in the form of a virtual "World Club of St. Petersburg", an international and Russian order bearer, listed in the list of honorary citizens of St. Petersburg, Mr. M.B. Piotrovsky fools his superiors with unctuous songs, tales and jokes about "the cultural heritage and the unsurpassed role of the Hermitage in the history of Russia."
In general, not Dostoevsky - a symbol of Russian culture, but Piotrovsky!
However, as is known, the concept of culture, like any other category, is a sought-for one, which creates ground for speculations by comrade (former communist) Mikhail Piotrovsky.
It is widely known that Mikhail Piotrovsky is a scientist, a specialist in Islam (and, therefore, a propagandist of the ideas of the Koran - who sincerely does not like his professional knowledge, for which he receives money?).
But for some reason he is also a laureate of prizes, as well as the son of an Armenian woman and a Russified Pole-communist B.B. regional committee of the CPSU, who approved the award lists), a member of the regional committee of the CPSU, fooling around about "the bright future of all mankind - communism"!
I would also like to ask: who maintains the information site of the State Hermitage Museum - not a professor or academician Mikhail Piotrovsky, but also Piotrovsky. Isn't he a relative of the General Director of the State Hermitage Museum?
And how can one not recall the words of Adlai Stevenson, who at one time spoke to one gentleman like this:
"IF YOU DON'T STOP LIES ABOUT ME
"I WON'T STOP TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU!"
…SO WILL IT BE ALLOWED
PERMANENT SERVICES
IN DESPITED BY COMMUNISTS
ORTHODOX CHURCHES
IMPERIAL WINTER PALACE?
DOES EVERYTHING STILL DEPEND
FROM A FORMER ATHEIST COMMUNIST
Piotrovsky M.B. ?
Interior view
Great Church of the Winter Palace
in St. Petersburg
"WE WAITING HERE FOR EVERY KAZAN CITIZEN"
The exhibition was traditionally preceded by a press conference by the Director of the Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky, in which the new director of the State Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve "Kazan Kremlin" took part Zilya Valeeva.
Piotrovsky, in his unchanging black scarf, even the hot weather did not allow Mikhail Borisovich to take it off, he had just returned from Amsterdam, where he was opening another exhibition in the Hermitage center. Appearing at night in Kazan, he had already managed to Mintimer Shaimiev see how the restoration of the Bolgars is progressing. Nevertheless, the press conference started almost on time.
The exhibition will run until March next year, and not only every citizen of Tatarstan should visit it, but also our neighbors from Chuvashia and Mari El, because this is our common history. It can be assumed that her attendance will break all records, Valeeva shared her assumptions.
There are no such exhibitions anywhere in the world and never will be. There is one museum in the world that could collect and present such a collection - this is the Hermitage, some of the exhibits are exhibited there for the first time in their lives, - Piotrovsky stressed the uniqueness of the exhibition.
By the way, the director of the Institute of History of the Republic of Tatarstan once suggested holding such an exhibition in Kazan Rafael Khakimov, his proposal was listened to with interest and received implementation within the walls of the Hermitage.
You will see simplicity and luxury - ceramics and golden goblets, this is typical for the nomadic world, - this is how Piotrovsky announced the exposition.
When asked by a BUSINESS Online correspondent about the insured value of the exposition, Piotrovsky replied: “I never name the insured value. But I can say one thing: it is very big here. You can see how much gold is on display.”
According to the director of the Hermitage, about 500 thousand people visited one of the similar exhibitions in St. Petersburg, according to Piotrovsky's forecast, the figure in Kazan may be higher.
“THE PEOPLE HAVE WOKE INTEREST IN HISTORY”
Exhibition “Nomads of Eurasia. On the Way to Empire” is the tenth exhibition in the Hermitage. In general, Kazan has been cooperating with the museum from the banks of the Neva for fifteen years. The initiative of this friendship and cooperation once belonged to the President of the Republic of Tatarstan Shaimiev. It is no coincidence that Mintimer Sharipovich was one of the most honored guests at the opening of a new exposition in the Hermitage-Kazan Center.
This year in Tatarstan has been declared the year not only of history, but also of the revival of historical heritage, the people have awakened interest in history, we have become different, - Mintimer Sharipovich emphasized at the opening ceremony of the exhibition.
When the ribbon was solemnly cut, according to tradition, the director of the Hermitage himself gave the first tour of the exposition. And Shaimiev became the first excursionist.
ON THE STEPPE
What did the nomads give to the world? How did horsemen interact with agricultural civilizations? These and other questions are answered by the exposition, which occupies all the Hermitage halls, it is built in chronological order.
Temporal coverage - from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. before the formation of the Great Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century. The collection has been collected for more than one year, it includes objects that came to the Hermitage from archaeological excavations of burial mounds, cities and sites, this is one part of the exhibited collection. The second came from the collection of collectors of the late XIX - early XX centuries.
There are items that are exhibited for the first time. These are finds from the Aimyrlyg and Kichmalka burial grounds.
ROYAL JEWELRY
The first hall is dedicated to the culture of the Scythian time, here the earliest monuments of Europe and Central Asia coexist. Here you can see an abundance of luxurious gold items of the finest work from the "royal" graves, they are complemented by the reconstruction of funeral costumes from the only undisturbed monument of this type, it was explored at the beginning of this century, this is the Arzhan-2 mound. drawings. These slabs, examples of nomadic art, are extremely rarely exhibited in a museum.
In the same section, another unique exhibit is presented - the ax from Kelermes, it was made in the 7th century BC and is considered a masterpiece of the Hermitage collection.
« ICE LENSES»
Wood, felt and leather - they can miraculously be preserved in burial grounds, but on one condition. If they are in the so-called "ice lenses". Such products from deep burial grounds, where the nobility were buried, are also on display. These are magnificent and unique products of the Pazyryk culture of Altai.
They are adjacent to the so-called Siberian collection of Peter the Great, it is noteworthy that it was with it that the museum business began in Russia at one time.
A number of European monuments are represented by products of warlike Sarmatians, they replaced the Scythians in the Black Sea steppes. The most striking exhibit of that time at the Hermitage exhibition is the decorations from the Khokhlach mound, where a female priestess was buried. Naturally, the burial is the richest.
THE GREAT MIGRATION OF PEOPLES
Gold items in polychrome animal style, specially shaped bronze cauldrons, weapons and decorations for horse harness are objects that tell about the culture of European Huns. Before us is the era of the great migration of peoples, a new page in the history of the nomadic tribes of Eurasia. At this time, Turkic tribes, the ancestors of many modern peoples, entered the historical arena in the east.
They move to life in cities, accepting all the achievements of settled farmers, but also retaining their originality. Stone sculptures of warriors, weapons, a belt set, horse equipment and other objects of material culture - they come from different places in Central and Central Asia and testify to the spread of Turkic influence over a vast territory.
There is another interesting section at the exhibition, it is dedicated to the state of the Karakhanids, it was formed at the turn of the first and second millennia in the foothills of the Tien Shan. Islam was spread in this state, and this can be clearly seen in art - in the wonderful products of ceramists, copper workers, glassblowers.
And finally, the final section of the new exposition. It is dedicated to the Great Mongol State - the empire that Genghis Khan created. And she, although for a short time, united the vast territories of Eurasia.
The first capital of this empire was Karakorum, materials obtained during excavations in this place are presented for the first time at an exhibition in the Hermitage center.
WHERE ARE WE FROM?
“Our path is the steppe. Our path is in boundless anguish,” the poet once wrote. At the exhibition you will hear this "voice of the steppe", the clatter of the hooves of the nomad's horses and the hubbub of the ancient city.
You will sigh, longing for something eternal with an ancient stone Polovtsian woman who helplessly folded her hands on her stomach. You will hear the ringing of a copper amphora and the roar of dragons and leopards fighting on a golden waist plate. Smile at the touching carved mountain goats.
But the main thing is that you will once again ask yourself the question: who are we, where are we from? Our distant past becomes tangible. Piece by piece, like a kind of mosaic, a picture of distant centuries has been recreated for us, and we see its beauty, scope and ... reality.
Mikhail Piotrovsky's "philosophy of rest" was first told to me on occasion by his son Boris: you can't make you rest, you can't get out for a walk, a stack of books in front of the sofa and nothing else is needed.
house difference
I don't like cottage? - asks Piotrovsky. - Well, except perhaps a dacha of the late 19th - early 20th century, when it took weeks to get ready, leave the city and start a special life there. A modern dacha for me is about the same as an apartment in St. Petersburg. In the summer I try to spend the night here whenever possible. We don't have any special jobs. Take a walk in the forest (the forest is interesting here), go to the sea. But the main thing for me in the country is to sit by the big window and look at the lawn.
This is a lawn, - his beautiful wife clarifies.
But in my opinion, the lawn, - the owner answers with not so easily surrendered male persistence. - And this is a completely different matter than looking at a tapestry in the Hermitage study. Blueberries grow here. Boris comes here more often. We meet late in the evening, we part. In the city, after all, the beauty of meetings is not the same, but in the country the triumph of return is possible: the gates open, and a person is in the gate.
I experienced it myself, the gates opened, you stepped into the kingdom of pines, birches and blueberries, and the owners - with a slight but recognizing nod - are already greeting you from the porch. And for some reason you start to worry.
The Piotrovskys' dacha is located in the famous Komarovo, the site of the old Leningrad academic dachas. After the war and the decision of the Council of People's Commissars "On the construction of dachas for full members of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR," a plot of land in the dacha Kellomyaki was transferred "to personal ownership" to 25 academicians free of charge. And the village was soon renamed in honor of the botanist Komarov, who did not have time to live at the dacha of the President of the Academy of Sciences. Akhmatova, Shostakovich, Likhachev, Schwartz, Cherkasov, Srugatsky, Germans lived and rested in Komarovo.
Dmitry Likhachev has an interesting diary entry: I have a friend, he is four years old, his name is Boris. It was little Boris Piotrovsky, the son of Mikhail Borisovich and the grandson of Boris Borisovich, who often, by right of a four-year-old neighbor, came to the Likhachevs' dacha. (“Ira, don’t worry if you don’t have dinner in the evening,” Likhachev’s daughter whispered to the boy’s mother, he ate two cutlets with us with pleasure. ) Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky bought the academic dacha late, it was an apartment in a two-story townhouse with a flower bed in front of the entrance. And at the place where their dacha now stands, the family once went to pick blueberries.
"I can imagine the difference between my house and Piotrovsky's house," the dacha resident who received me before said ironically. "You can't imagine," I laughed. Piotrovsky's dacha is directly perpendicular to the inertia-negative cliche of philistine ideas - one-story, organic to the surrounding forest, an optimal haven for an intellectual who has never lost his way in anything unnecessary. And the son's house in the corner of the site is the same.
time to think
The owner is on vacation, and is just busy with the main summer business - he sits at a table in front of a large window, looks at the lawn and continues to justify the cottage in his own eyes.
It's good to think strategically in the country. Leisurely. And write slowly. Something non-urgent. I'm writing "Director's Choice" right now. This is such a project for directors of world museums - to choose 30 things and paintings, but not favorite ones, but those that you want to talk about. There will be one of my favorites. And so, I, for example, have already chosen the "Annunciation" by Simone Martini.
There are so many people in the city near him! - Irina Leonidovna whispers. - And here sometimes - I try - not a single contact.
But "mosquito calmness" is still relative. The absolute is a thing of the past, now they ride motorcycles, they are building something all the time, building fences. Piotrovsky does not like high fences, but when the British begin to point them out to him, he retorts: when we went to such and such a lord, there were no fences, of course, but there were electronic guards for all 40 hectares, try to come in. Nobody wants an invasion of privacy.
At the dacha, of course, there is a partial switch, - continues Piotrovsky. -Switching to think. In general, the most important pleasure for me is to think. And the main problem is that there is no time for it.
At the same time, he has one of the most important modern skills - the ability to quickly resolve issues. He definitely knows how to do it. (In a minute - and without ignoring the opinions of others - he can decide, for example, to do or not to do this or that exhibition). But all the more valuable is the time of slow thought.
He goes to the table, opens the diary - a long blue marker line has already marked "time to think" in it.
But he has heavy thoughts.
The fact that recently for some reason the number of - almost Soviet - bans, and - almost from the 90s - threats, has sharply increased. Threats to museum collections come both from private owners and from the bureaucracy. The number of restrictions and bureaucratic prodding in the search for absolute order is so wild that the remark from the ministry “You underestimated financial risks” has to be directly written that the Hermitage’s main risks are related to receiving money from the state and embezzlement, “sanctified” (if you look closely) just by officials .
The Hermitage is a place where, no matter how dreary, they are ready to give 150 direct and impartial answers to the endless orders of the ministry. For example, about the fact that the reporting required by the ministry is easily falsified, and the theft occurs exactly at the level of bureaucratized state reporting. That the "electronic accounting" imposed from above is the easiest to fake. That not taking into account the peculiarities of such a museum as the Hermitage is dangerous.
Further, his slow "country" thought goes into conspiracy theories - but he definitely has the right to it, because he is well aware of it. Behind the almost toxic (due to bureaucracy) behavior of the state is the pushing of museums towards private forms of existence. Behind the usual "You report poorly, store poorly, your storerooms are bursting, let us arrange it" can't someone's plan for a museum redistribution be hidden? In favor of private owners or poor provincial museums?
And just let me touch the museum collection... In the 1920s, everything started with innocent revisions, but quickly getting into the taste of commanding culture, officials sold thousands of exhibits from the Hermitage abroad. Yesterday it was taboo for everyone, but today it is seizures and sales at auctions.
Throughout the 25 years of his leadership, Piotrovsky sees the main threat in the attempt on the collection, and connects everything with it - both the strange inspections of the Hermitage, and the strange dark theft from the museum, and raids in connection with exhibitions of contemporary art, and attempts to recreate the Museum of New Western Art in Moscow for Hermitage account.
So far, the president's famous joke "even if you come to Piotrovsky with a rifle, he won't give back anything from the museum anyway" - it confirms his correctness and victory.
Do not believe the great danger? But listen - one event, carefully seen by Mikhail Piotrovsky. "Here came the law on import-export. We (the Union of Museums) first took part in its discussion, and then we were pushed aside and very powerfully pushed it through the State Duma (the Duma Committee on Culture objected, but in vain). There are many good things there, but in addition to them, it turned out to be easier ... the export of cultural property from Russia. And besides, when exhibitions from abroad come to us, state museums, we are now forced to pay various customs duties that we did not pay before. The Ministry of Culture gave us a certificate "these are things culture, you can’t take this or that from them, "and the new law has now limited the ministry¸ and the certificate should be given by an independent commission, which does not exist."
And as a result, private museums (which, in principle, Piotrovsky loves and supports) gained something, while the state ones lost what they had. Meanwhile, it is the culture protected by the state that needs privileges - both tax and moral.
So what Piotrovsky thinks about slowly is really hard to think about.
Realizing that Mikhail Borisovich most likely would not let me go to the dacha, if I - in the limit - were only interested in dacha life, flowers, butterflies, I still risk emerging from the regime of his difficult slow thoughts and I ask a simple question to Irina Leonidovna "And the dacha did you come up with?"
Yes, she is, - Mikhail Borisovich is not going to give in to his wife the answer. - All of it - from the idea to the big management of the construction site.
Are you not interfering?
No. Even if she sometimes asks me for advice, she will still do as she sees fit.
But do you like the result of her choice?
Of course I like it. In general, I like everything that Irina Leonidovna does (you should have heard what a beautiful tone it was said. - Approx. Aut.). This is all dictated by the concern that we all feel good. But first and foremost, me. First she takes care of me - then the children. (Calmly, calmly, neutrally, neutrally, Irina Leonidovna is silent.)
Seven things from Piotrovsky's dacha
Wanting to stay at this dacha longer, I ask the owners to show me the 7 most symbolic and characteristic things in it. I would personally be the first to include the picture "Boy in a Scarf" hanging over the stairs in the summer collection of seven symbolic things. ("The work of Alexander Zadorin, - clarifies Irina Leonidovna. - And this is Mishin's portrait").
"The theme of the scarf", yes, is a cult one for Piotrovsky ("Here you are taking pictures of me - but am I without a scarf?"), but not in the country. The fact is that at temperatures above 23 degrees, he takes off his scarf, and today (and often) in the country 29. But Zadorin's picture is wonderful.
Mikhail Borisovich seizes the initiative from us to search for the seven most telling things about him.
Firstly, this is a pile of books that I slowly read at the dacha - page by page. I drop one and start another. Sometimes I watch movies at the same time. I read, for example, "Fima" by Amos Oz and immediately watch "Fauda", the famous Israeli series about terror.
I know one secret of reading Mikhail Piotrovsky for sure: in the pile of books he reads there will definitely be one about economics and finance, last time he called Nasim Taleb's "Black Swan", now - I guessed it, there is a book - this is "Odyssey against ferrets" by Georg von Walwitz - about financial markets.
The dacha is the place where Piotrovsky takes off his scarf. And collects high stacks of books - for reading and slow thinking
- "Mirrors for Sheikhs" by Alexander Kazeruni - an absolutely wonderful book about the creation of museums in the Persian Gulf - I need the next report. The book of the new rector of the European University, Vadim Volkov, "The State or the Price of Order" is also worth reading. "The Suffering Middle Ages" is now read by everyone. "History of the state of Lakhmids" - about pre-Islamic Arabs, that's what I just read on the page. "Cold Summer" - word by word commentary on Mandelstam's prose. And at the very bottom - always! - the book of eternal return, "Petersburg Tales" by Gogol. I have another stack of books on the second floor, would you like me to show you?
In the new pack "Envy" by Olesha, "The Abnormal" by Michel Foucault, "In Memory of Catalonia" by Orwell and ... "Flowers of Francis of Assisi".
Borya then went to Italy and, having got to Assisium, joined the pilgrimage to St. Francis. But we were calm for him: what is possible and what is not possible in Catholicism was explained to him by the former seminarian Sergei Shnurov.
The story turned out to be quite serious. When there was an exhibition of Fabre in the Hermitage and dissatisfaction with the "people" appeared, the museum began to think about who could enter into a dialogue with the people. As a result, Sergei Shnurov was invited to the exhibition, he liked Fabre, he said - not strangers, his own - but the right words, and the exhibition went relatively calmly. The power of a buffoon culture - and a buffoon is almost always smart - is great within a rigorous situation.
And here, pay attention, the only table that I manage to keep empty, - Mikhail Borisovich continues the tour. ("Did Irina Leonidovna insist?", "No, Irina Leonidovna does not interfere in such things"). It's good to have, of course, more than one clean table, but it doesn't work. And here only today are the papers, because I am writing. This knife for cutting book pages was given to me by our ambassador in Oman, I was very afraid that it would be taken away from me at the border, it looks like a dagger.
Irina Leonidovna and I offer, as a symbol of the house, portraits of the great mathematicians - Newton, Descartes, Laplace, Euler, which hung in the house of Mikhail Borisovich's grandfather, artilleryman and mathematics teacher, author of excellent textbooks. I'm interested in bright beads. Mikhail Borisovich accompanies each of our finds with a story, a plot.
I brought the Lebanese Christian rosary, and the shell rosary was brought by the Pope from Oceania.
Things of the late father - a separate "topic". On the second floor, in the place of honor, there is an old typewriter given to his father for his 50th birthday, and Piotrovsky asks to include it in 7 symbolic things at home. As well as the restored (Irina Leonidovna was engaged in this) old armchair in front of the table.
And of course - a dollhouse from his office. It was made by a very large art dealer, many famous directors of world museums have such dollhouses.
The desktop Royal Palace in Amsterdam is also dear to him, because once, when the queen came to the opening of the Hermitage exhibition in the Dutch capital, they did not allow her to open it - because of the threat of a terrorist attack. And the queen said "Then let's all come to me", her palace was opposite. The queen did not often live in the palace, did not really know where her glasses were, opened the cabinets with keys. Recently, at a meeting with Piotrovsky (she is now a retired queen), she recalled this. And he keeps the desktop Royal Palace of Amsterdam, given to him as a keepsake. And this is definitely a symbolic thing of his house.
Maybe it doesn't look like this, but a miniature chair, the size of a little finger, breathes its history, one of those that Valery Fokin's theater made, recreating the famous Meyerhold's "Masquerade".
I'm beginning to think that there is nothing in Piotrovsky's house without history - all the rosaries are from Oceania, all the chairs are from Meyerhold. Baskets on the floor, where it is convenient to put both books and a bottle of wine, for example, were "peeped" in the house of the Italian publisher Leonardo Montadori. (“The richest man,” recalls Irina Leonidovna, “but he kept magnificent books like this, in baskets, and we liked this idea”).
Piotrovsky draws our attention to the icon - this is St. John (Steblin-Kamensky), the New Martyr and Confessor of Russia, who was shot in 1930 near Voronezh. He is an ancestor in his youth of Piotrovsky's best friend, the famous linguist, Iranist, academician Ivan Steblin-Kamensky, who died in May of this year.
The icon was given to me by my wife and daughter Vanya. His daughter is an icon painter.
Cult of personality
Here, of course, we have a cult of personality, says Piotrovsky, showing his puppet himself.
It is impossible not to mention the paradoxically ironic line of things in his house - a photograph of a monkey from the zoo who painted (“The Hermitage does not let such crazy things pass”), a comic birthday greeting received by the owner from the European University “To you, the boyar and the chief judge of the Sovereign of Hermitage …"
But the jokes are exhausted quickly, and I want to carefully look at the old notebooks, in which there were his sketches of ancient Yemeni inscriptions and drawings that he made as a member and leader of the famous Yemeni scientific expedition. Judging by the modern war in Yemen, this may be their only repository in the world, and then these notebooks are not worth the price. A book should be written about this. But scientific.
This is actually what slows me down, - says Mikhail Borisovich, sitting down at the table on the terrace. - Scientific work requires deep immersion in all sorts of comparative materials, and there is no time for this.
Irina Leonidovna brings other, no less interesting notebooks - they contain the last drawings of her husband. "This is the 'Sacrifice of Abraham'," he explains, while my eyes are confused in unusual lines, "and this is the 'Madonna'.
I'm trying to challenge his method of "torn reading" - page by page from different books. This is the same "clip thinking", the scourge of the modern world and consciousness.
But when you read a little, you just start to read and think slowly, he objects. - Ira, why is there no sugar on the table?
We don't have sugar in our house. I provided candy.
How is it that we don't have sugar in our house? - goes to the kitchen and returns with a full vase of two kinds of sugar.
Are you hiding sugar from me?! - the wife is surprised, and a calmly loving dialogue begins about the benefits and harms of sugar, which consists half of views and, it seems, is the best test on the topic, you see a happy family in front of you or not.
When, before leaving, we will stand at the gate with Mikhail Borisovich, and Irina Leonidovna will close the house and quietly walk towards us along the path, I will tell him that I will never cease to be amazed at the art of being a wife - to be silent when there is something to say, to remember the most important thing, but concerning her husband, and not you, to give up hers for the sake of her husband’s interests (Irina Leonidovna worked in the Committee for Foreign Economic Relations of St. Petersburg under the then vice-mayor Vladimir Putin, she succeeded, and a stunning career could await her).
I think being a wife is a talent, says Piotrovsky. - And, congenital.
Boris arrives for lunch at a country restaurant on the Sestra River. Fit, cheerful, happy. He says that he gave two interviews, shows a new clip shot on a mobile phone.
Self-confident, says half-admiring, half-shy Mikhail Borisovich after dinner.
Yes, no, just self-confident, - we object.
Yes, perhaps, self-confidence is important, - Piotrovsky agrees already in the car.
My country day with the great museum worker of the world will end absolutely not in the country. The exhibition "Furniture for all the vagaries of the body" opens in the Hermitage. It will be opened by the deputy director, since the director is on vacation, but Piotrovsky at the exhibition with the persistence of wasps, which this year invade the dacha Komarovo, will be surrounded by all kinds of people. But Irina Leonidovna still manages to fight the wasps, but here, like with sugar ...
And then an office where you urgently need to answer the letters of the "brilliant actress" Helen Mirren with a request to allow her to make a film in the Hermitage (rejection, of course) and an old friend, an English museum worker, asking a personal question (the harsh impact of sanctions on human consciousness), is not dangerous whether to go to Rostov-on-Don for a scientific conference. "I write to him: are you crazy?".
And for me, in order not to lose the memory of the dacha, all that remains is to retreat.
Mikhail Piotrovsky in the foyer of the Hermitage Theatre.
The word "Hermitage" now sounds fashionable. In the summer, the oldest Russian museum thundered with an exhibition by Annie Leibovitz. Then I went to the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art. Moreover, he brought not some Petersburg pride like Novikov's neo-academicists, but the archives of the Moscow conceptualist Prigov. And now he has opened and shows until mid-January in his Greco-Roman halls an exhibition of abstract sculptures by the living British muralist Anthony Gormley. Has the Dickensian "antiquities shop" fallen, where for generations people went to Catherine's tapestries, Rembrandt's "Danae" and Matisse's "Dance"? And where does the director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, look?
The all-powerful owner of the Winter Palace and Palace Square, who forbids skating rinks and allows Madonna's concerts, the "scarf man", Mikhail Piotrovsky has long been more than a museum director. And now he contemplates the domes and spiers of the Peter and Paul Fortress through the window of his reception room: a stone face, one hand clenched into a fist, an office folder in the other, rectangular glasses in a metal frame, a dark blue suit with a matching tie ... Piotrovsky then whether the colossus - Peter the Great performed by Stalin's favorite artist Simonov, or the "red director" of the era of Chernomyrdin.
Mikhail Borisovich, what needs to be done to make you take off your scarf?
Should I take off my scarf? Please! - Piotrovsky immediately pulls off his legendary black scarf.
Can you knit like a youth? Well, a collar?
The photographer takes an almost historic shot. And I am quoting to Piotrovsky the answer of the Hermitage press service to my letter, whether their director will agree to change clothes for the sake of shooting for VOGUE: “No, he is more than a serious person.” The serious man begins to smile.
My stylist is my wife, she offers, I agree if I like it. Here is the scarf. Everyone is constantly wondering why I wear it. And I just like it. As I put it on fifteen years ago, I still don’t take it off. When I leave the house, I always wear a scarf. Let's go to the halls, only I need to lock the door.
And Piotrovsky naturally takes a bunch of keys out of his pocket, pushes us out of the waiting room, locks himself inside and appears from the back door around the corner.
His assistants have a day off (we meet on Sunday), and Piotrovsky, who turns sixty-seven in December, stopped by to speak to the students. The Hermitage came up with a new program for young people - with lectures, master classes and competitions like "Guess which masterpiece is in which room."
There is still time before the lecture, and the director is taking me to show the Gormley exhibition. Through the hall of Augustus, where, next to the busts of Tiberius and Nero, the avant-garde of the grandmother of modern art, Louise Bourgeois, who died last year, is on permanent display, to the hall of Dionysus and the Roman courtyard.
In the first, the Olympian gods were removed from the pedestals and placed directly on the floor. And seventeen cast-iron Gormley sculptures were installed in a nearby courtyard. Why such sacrifices?
The viewer passes to the abstract, rough bodies of Gormley's people through a series of perfect bodies of the gods - but equal to him, the viewer. He's used to them looking down on him.
But are you too late to start? And why with Bourgeois, Gormley - honored veterans ...
Wrong question. The Hermitage has always dealt with contemporary art. What is the collection of Catherine II, with which the museum began? She also collected art contemporary to her - she ordered Chardin, Houdon, Reynolds. Our principle is art is one and there have been no revolutions in it.
In his reception room overlooking the Neva.
In 1930-1940, the Hermitage was given part of the nationalized private collections of Shchukin and Morozov, collectors of the then actual Impressionist artists. This is how Van Gogh, Cezanne, Kandinsky appeared in the museum. In 1956, a retrospective of the still-living Pablo Picasso was held and the third floor was opened, especially for European art of the 20th century. In 1967, already under Boris Piotrovsky, the father of the current director - a prodigy of Stalinist archeology, academician, Hero of Socialist Labor, who headed the Hermitage for twenty-six years - Lydia Delektorskaya donated a collection of works by Matisse to the museum. Eleven years later, it was here that Andy Warhol's first exhibition in Russia was held.
But the real window to Europe and America was opened by Piotrovsky II. In 2000, the Hermitage hosted the first Warhol retrospective and showed the latest masterpieces of Jackson Pollock. In 2004, the first exhibitions in Russia of the most expensive - the Russian underground artist, Muscovite émigré Kabakov and the American abstract artist Rothko - were held here. Moscow will only see them in the late 2000s at Garage.
From Kabakov's "Toilet in the Corner" and "Loneliness in the Closet", which he presented to the Hermitage, we began the formation of a collection of contemporary art, - recalls Piotrovsky.
Since then, Bourgeois and Rauschenberg, Polke and Soulages have appeared in the collection of the Hermitage 20/21 project, within the framework of which contemporary art exhibitions are held. But of the Russians, only Tselkov and Novikov. But it started off well. In 1964, they arranged an intra-museum exhibition of the works of the team, including the disgraced Mikhail Shemyakin, who was then working as a rigger.
That exhibition led to political repressions, the resignation of the director Artamonov... For a whole year they got out. It was a tragedy for the museum and for our art in general. Then it became clear how dangerous shocking is for the museum. And that the Hermitage needs its own way in dealing with contemporary art.
While we are walking around the museum, like Sokurov's "Russian Ark" - without a break, I tell Piotrovsky that for me he is, first of all, an Arabic scholar, cited extremely abundantly in my institute diploma.
I sometimes joke that an orientalist is my profession, and working here is a hobby: there can be no others with such employment. By the way, for almost eighty years the Hermitage has been headed by either orientalists or archaeologists. I'm an oriental archaeologist. An orientalist is an obligation to live in several worlds, an archaeologist is an understanding of where to spend money and how to account for them: you live on expeditions. I was recently asked: “Why is your Islamic art department in the worst possible state?” This is true. It is inconvenient to put your interests in the foreground.
He recalls his internship in Nasser's Egypt, how he taught history to the hierarchs of the socialist South Yemen in the seventies - and says that the current revolutions in the East are a personal pain for him. And then he moves on to contemporary art: it has a future, and interesting, Piotrovsky is convinced, just in the Muslim East.
Islam does not welcome the image of people, but abstractions - yes. In Dubai or Baghdad it is easier to create a contemporary art museum and it will flourish.
On the Soviet stairs of the Hermitage.
With this and his biography - born in Yerevan, great-great-great-grandfather - a Catholic, father - Russian with Polish roots, "son-in-law of the Armenian people", who spent half his life in the Caucasus, exploring the state of Urartu, mother - Armenian - Piotrovsky explains the universality of his and his Hermitage.
It's not a museum of art, it's a museum of world culture.
It began for Piotrovsky like this, at the age of four - not with Danae, but with military oriental drums in the Arsenal and parquet mosaics.
Isn't it a shame that your son is unlikely to replace you at your post? By the way, have you already decided for yourself when to retire?
Such things are decided by fate, and such questions are indecent. In 2014, the Hermitage - two hundred and fifty. In particular, a museum of the 19th and 20th centuries will open in the Eastern Wing of the General Staff building, and there will also be contemporary art - demonstrations of video art and performances. And my son, an economist, is engaged in publishing business. He also publishes books about the Hermitage. My daughter lives in Moscow, she is a banker, I consult her on all economic matters. Maybe the children will continue to participate in the life of the museum. But the Hermitage is not only the Piotrovsky family. It is customary for us to work with families - for employees, caretakers.
Since the Hermitage and family and home, what is your favorite place here now?
I'll tell you now, and then everyone will go and ask me to take pictures there. Once I went to Japan and mentioned somewhere that I like black beer. So then in all the cities where we were, the Japanese ran looking for black beer for me. And I can't drink that much. Now I'm walking - admiring the Jordan stairs. We have just restored it.
Finally we reach the Hermitage Theatre. The seven-row amphitheater is full of schoolchildren and students. "Sit in the orchestra pit," Piotrovsky suggests. From there you cannot see how he speaks, and therefore you especially listen to his words. For example, that there are no curators in the museum, these “always the smartest people in the museum”, but there are research assistants. That it was not the Hermitage that had the honor of participating in the last Venice Biennale, but that the Biennale was hosting the Hermitage. Piotrovsky is again a pillar to match the one of Alexandria.
Are you serious about the honor of hosting the Hermitage for the Biennale? I ask as we sit down in his study under a portrait of his father.
Well, this is to imbue the youth, - the director smiles. - The Hermitage at the Biennale is a different genre for us, we acted arrogantly and self-confidently. I generally like to take risks, to shock. A year ago we did an exhibition of Picasso - we have never had such a large one in the front halls. Colleagues from the Parisian museum, when they saw all these golden columns, were dumbfounded, tried to cover them. But I was against it. We do everything in such a way that, in any case, all things we have are either completely invented by us, or with a sensitive Hermitage accent.
"Apollo" by the main St. Petersburg artist of the 1990s, the founder of neo-academism Timur Novikov, was exhibited at the General Staff Building - overlooking the Alexandrian Column, Montferrand's paraphrase of Trajan's Roman column. When they decided to exhibit photography in 1998, they started (against the disapproval of critics who believed that photography did not belong next to painting) with an Irving Penn retrospective. Status portrait painter Picasso, Stravinsky, Duchamp, the father of modern fashion photography, the author of American VOGUE covers of the fifties and highly artistic still lifes - that is, a creator close to what is already hanging in the Hermitage. And when black-and-white polaroids of nude models, orchids and stars of the underground classic Robert Mapplethorpe were later brought in, they were hung interspersed with engravings by Dutch mannerists of the 16th century. Those who saw that exhibition claim that they understood where the cult of perfect bodily beauty came from, which reigned in fashion and gloss in the eighties.
Why not make a purely fashionable exhibition of costumes? Here in the Pushkin Museum they showed Chanel, Dior. And you had the last one in 1987 - a retrospective of Yves Saint Laurent...
Wrong question again! We were pioneers in this too. It's just that here, just like with contemporary art, we need our Hermitage stories. In the 2000s, we exhibited the works of Lamanova, Charles Worth: they sewed for empresses - this is our history. Or like the Annie Leibovitz photo exhibition. It consisted of two parts: one - the legendary "ceremonial" portraits of stars for Vanity Fair and VOGUE. The second is pictures of the newborn children of Leibovitz, father, life partner of Susan Sontag, including during her battle with cancer. And we placed these, purely personal photographs in the study-bedroom of Alexander II: he was brought to this room after the assassination attempt, he died in it, and everything is preserved here in that form. These walls have seen birth, growth, life and death. Where else can this be done, except for the Hermitage?
Former Minister of Culture Mikhail Shvydkoi (right)
and current director of the State Hermitage Museum
Mikhail Piotrovsky
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Online http://www.baltinfo.ru/2013/01/16/V...rmitazhe-330300 :
It has long been known that in the bowels of the State Hermitage Museum, subordinate to the Ministry of Culture of Russia, in the deep underground there is a community of Orthodox Christians, as in the days of the persecutor of Christians, the sadistic Roman emperor Nero, who, on legal grounds - by decree of the President of Russia - demands to be released from "worldly exhibitions" temples of the official residence of the Emperors of Russia (homes of the heads of the Russian state - emperors and empresses) - the Winter Palace. Christians urgently ask to fulfill the Decrees of the President on the return of the objects of Christian worship to the Russian Orthodox Church. Director of the State Hermitage Museum Mikhail Piotrovsky does not pay attention to the legitimate demands of the Orthodox, he does not want to comply with the Decrees of the President of Russia.
Why?
As a former hereditary atheist communist?
Or for some other reason?
Or citizen Piotrovsky M.B., who has ascended “very high”, has no time to pay attention to the “standing below” Orthodox Petersburgers, for he (already or still?) is the General Director of the State Hermitage Museum, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, full member of the Academy of Arts, full member of the Academy of Humanities, Head of the Department of Museum Affairs and Monument Protection, Professor of the Faculty of Philosophy of St. Petersburg University, Professor of the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg University, Head of the Department of History of the Ancient East of the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg University, Dean of the Oriental Faculty Petersburg University, Chairman of the Union of Museums of Russia, member of the International Council of Museums, member of the Presidium of the Russian Committee of UNESCO, laureate of the Prize of the President of the Russian Federation in the field of literature and art, and so on and so forth and so on ...
But for the time being, he, M.B. Piotrovsky, is not yet a museum emperor! more and more posts...
Is it possible that the former atheist communist comrade, and now Mr. Mikhail Piotrovsky, is so brilliant that while officially in the responsible state service of the General Director of the State Hermitage Museum, he can simultaneously perform responsible work in other positions - dozens of times more, than the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin himself?
Does the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Rostislavovich Medinsky know that one of the museum directors subordinate to him, wearing his invariable scarf around his neck and personifying the ideological trend of “elegant scarfism with short lean Caucasian legs” in Russian political thought, can simultaneously, in addition to the general directorate in the State Hermitage Museum, to perform so many other functions and memberships?
It is high time for the famous Russian statesman, chief sanitary doctor of Russia, Gennady Grigoryevich Onishchenko, to check why Mr. Piotrovsky does not protect his health, scrupulously performing so many important duties at the same time. Surely this violates the Labor Code of the Russian Federation ...
Doesn't Mikhail Borisovich as the General Director of the State Hermitage Museum, being an "editor" and "compiler", the author of "prefaces" and "afterwords", not receive any money?
Perhaps he passes them on to pensioners - caretakers of the halls, junior researchers and employees of the Hermitage, who receive a meager salary? Give them a list of those blessed!
But why is this happening?
Is he a very rich man?
The fiftieth anniversary of the reign (1964-2014) of the “Piotrovsky House” in the State Hermitage Museum is just around the corner, about which the doctoral cantor has written a special book, The Hermitage. Piotrovskie” (St. Petersburg, 2004, 170 pp.), timed to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the removal from the post of Director of the Hermitage in 1964, the outstanding archaeologist Mikhail Illarionovich Artamonov (1898-1972).
Artamonov's resignation took place “thanks to” the exhibition activities of the notorious Shemyakin Mishka, who is now abroad, a provocateur from art (that was his name in Saigon).
As is known, professor and academician Piotrovsky was not involved in the death of Larisa Zavadskaya, who robbed the funds of the State Hermitage Museum (this was proved by the court).
He, being the general director of the State Hermitage Museum, is not guilty of the death of the thief Larisa Zavadskaya at the working museum post!
A thief or thieves stole exhibits worth hundreds of millions of rubles from the funds of the State Hermitage Museum.
Piotrovsky M.B., director of the State Hermitage Museum, professor and correspondent member, for this largest theft in the history of the Hermitage, which will soon, in 2014, turn a quarter of a millennium, suffered only a reprimand from the talkative on various occasions and occasions on the Kultura channel » former Minister of Culture Mikhail Shvydkoy.
By the way, the former relative of M.B. Piotrovsky Natasha Dementyeva (the former wife of his cousin) was the Minister of Culture under Yeltsin and distinguished herself when Yeltsin buried the so-called “Ekaterinburg remains”, which are not recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church as the true bodies of the family of the last Russian emperor.
One of Natasha's deputies was Misha, by the name of Shvydkoi, who swung chairs with Natasha, who, already a minister, announced to Piotrovsky M.B. for the "exploits" of the thief Larisa Zavadskaya, only a reprimand.
But after all, for similar offenses (oversight of theft), Defense Minister Serdyukov not so long ago lost his high place ...
M.B. Piotrovsky is “sitting”! Let's add still...
"World Citizen of St. Petersburg", supporting a small clan in the form of a virtual "World Club of St. Petersburg", an international and Russian order bearer, listed in the list of honorary citizens of St. Petersburg, Mr. M.B. Piotrovsky fools his superiors with unctuous songs, tales and jokes about "the cultural heritage and the unsurpassed role of the Hermitage in the history of Russia."
In general, not Dostoevsky - a symbol of Russian culture, but Piotrovsky! However, as is known, the concept of culture, like any other category, is a sought-for one, which creates ground for speculations by comrade (former communist) Mikhail Piotrovsky.
It is widely known that Mikhail Piotrovsky is a scientist, a specialist in Islam (and, therefore, a propagandist of the ideas of the Koran - who sincerely does not like his professional knowledge, for which he receives money?).
But for some reason, he is also a laureate of awards, as well as the son of an Armenian woman and a Russified Pole-communist B.B. regional committee of the CPSU, who approved the award lists), a member of the regional committee of the CPSU, fooling around about "the bright future of all mankind - communism"!
Once again I would like to ask: who maintains the information site of the State Hermitage Museum - not a professor or academician Mikhail Piotrovsky, but also Piotrovsky. Isn't he a relative of the General Director of the State Hermitage Museum?
You can continue further, but until the time has come ...!
