Putin orders govt. to consider restoration of contemporary Western art museum

(Interfax – MOSCOW, April 30, 2013) Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the government to consider by June 15 the expediency of restoring a contemporary Western art museum in Moscow.

“To consider the expediency of restoring a new (contemporary) Western art museum in Moscow,” say Putin’s instructions given after the Direct Line with Russians.

The government’s report on the subject is due on June 15.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts Director Irina Antonova proposed in the Direct Line with Putin last week to restore the contemporary Western art museum and to return exhibits transferred after the museum’s liquidation to the Hermitage. In turn, State Hermitage Museum Director Mikhail Piotrovsky protested against the possible restoration of the museum with exhibits kept in the Hermitage.

The First Museum of New Western Art opened on Bolshoy Znamensky Side-Street in Moscow in 1918 to present a collection of West European (predominantly French) paintings and sculptures dating from the 1860s. The collection included works by Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro, Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Auguste Rodin. The collection of benefactor Sergei Shchukin was the core of the exhibition. The Second Museum of New Western Art opened at 21, Prechistenka Street in 1919. It was based on the collection of benefactor Ivan Morozov.

The two museums were blended in 1923 under the name Museum of New Western Art. The latter was transformed into a branch of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1925. The State Museum of New Western Art was abolished in 1948 and the exhibits were divided between the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage.