The Russian Museum: 100 Years of Russian Treasures

The Russian Museum celebrated its 100th anniversary in March of this year with the typical pomp and circumstance -- foreign dignitaries and Russian ministers, champagne openings and a charity ball. But this was no ordinary anniversary.

This is the celebration of a Russian institution that many Russian intellectuals view as nothing less than the cornerstone of the nation's identity.

And rightly so. Within the walls of the Mikhailovsky Palace and the museum's other three buildings is a 380,000-piece collection, the most complete gathering of Russian art anywhere in the world: from ancient gold jewelry to icons, sculpture to numismatics, 19th century realist painting to Russian avant-garde greats. There is even modern video art on display. If it's Russian and it's art, it's probably in the Russian Museum.

Indeed, only Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery can compare. While the Russian Museum's collection is four times the size of the Tretyakov's, the latter does boast better collections of late 19th century painters, especially the peredvizhniki (itinerants), and medieval icons, such as those created by Andrei Rublyov, Russia's greatest icon painter and a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Russian Museum has not only survived the Soviet collapse and the aftermath, but it has made immense progress during the 10-year stewardship of its director, Vladimir Gusev. It has doubled its square meterage, launched a massive reconstruction of its beautiful palaces and has increased the amount of art in its collection; and it is getting by on private funding despite the government's failure to pay what it owes.

But the Russian Museum greets its centennial with deep problems. Like many other cultural institutions here, the Russian Museum has been taking a beating over the past few years. Museum attendance has dropped, as has government financial support, and public donations are not yet making up the balance.

The program for collecting contemporary work lacks funding and, some observers claim, direction. And indeed, the museum often does seem adrift. On the one hand, it is an inherently nationalist and conservative institution; on the other, it has hosted an eclectic handful of exhibits so daringly out-of-character that they are almost startling.

This, after all, is the museum that recently found room amidst the icons and the Repins for Brian Eno's art and music installation. Or consider "Agitation for Happiness: Soviet Art of the Stalinist Epoch," a major exhibit that opened in 1994 with little advance notice, and received overnight international attention for its mix of the uplifting, the sinister and the merely kitschy.

Perhaps nowhere is the museum's charming indecision more pronounced than in its relationship with Russian avant-gardists like Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich. Out of all of Russia's artists, the works of these men are among the most famous and popular abroad, and the museum claims to have a "colossal collection" of Kandinsky and "the very best" of Malevich.

But most of these valuable paintings are not on the walls: Of all the thousands of paintings on display, the works of Kandinsky, Malevich and colleague Alexander Rodchenko together number no more than 10.

"We have a colossal collection of the Russian avant-garde," said Tatyana Pchyolyanskaya, an art historian at the museum. "[But] either we don't have enough space, or they are always traveling abroad."

But what better time than an anniversary to make amends for any oversights? The museum now has a temporary avant-garde exhibit in the Marble Palace, one of the museum's four buildings. Plans are also in the works to permanently exhibit them there.

The Russian Museum first opened to the public 100 years ago on March 7, which is March 19 according to the calendar in use today.

The idea of creating a national museum dates back to the beginning of the 19th century. With the advent of Romanticism and the Napoleonic Wars, Europe saw a rise in national awareness amongst its many peoples -- each sought to enthrone its culture, in part by establishing museums to past glory and life.

Russia, too, sought to monumentalize its culture, but the country was dogged by more pressing internal problems for most of the 19th century -- such as the abolition of serfdom, which finally occurred in 1861. Not until the twilight of the tsarist era did Nicholas II decree the Russian Museum into being. The original 1,500-piece collection was drawn from the Hermitage and the Academy of Arts.

At the time, the nation's most valuable art objects were held in private collections. But with the Revolution, the Bolsheviks became the Robin Hoods of Russian culture -- robbing the art storehouses of the rich and giving the treasures to the Russian Museum and to the Hermitage.

Later, however, the Hermitage suffered as Soviet bureaucrats looted its collections for choice sales abroad, but ignored the Russian Museum.

In the past 10 years, the museum has grown exponentially, using the cachet of its 100th anniversary to get the government to sign over some extraordinary acquisitions -- the Stroganov Palace, the Marble Palace, and the Engineer's (Mikhailovsky) Castle. These new buildings have more than doubled its display space.

But all have demanded expensive restoration work. In the past three years, the federal government allocated 450 million rubles ($75 million) for reconstruction alone on those buildings, but only 40 percent of the money has ever arrived.

"The work is only half completed," said Irina Teterina, the Russian Museum's chief architect. "The reconstruction, most of it to be done on the newly acquired palaces, will take at least five more years."

To pick up the financial slack, the Russian Museum has had to foray into the world of private sponsorship. Inkombank, Russia's second largest bank by assets, is the museum's leading benefactor and has provided support for the anniversary renovations and celebrations.

The Friends of the Russian Museum, a public financial support group started last June, has raised about $200,000, according to director Gusev. But Inkombank aside, no modern Rockefeller -- or Tretyakov, for that matter -- has stepped forward. For 1997 the museum's gifts and grants totaled a paltry $777,000.

For comparison, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York raised $36 million dollars in the last fiscal year to help fund its reconstruction drive, said Elyse Topalian, head of press relations there.

If the new rich are failing to take much notice of the Russian Museum, they aren't alone. Attendance dropped from 1995 to 1996 -- in part, museum officials say, due to reconstruction work -- although 1997 saw a slight recovery.

But, given the museum's status as a hearth for the Russian national identity, this drop in attendance is troubling. Most Russians revere the museum as a temple of the Russian soul. They learn this from a young age: 80 percent of the museum's visitors are schoolchildren.

Internationally, however, the Russian Museum is surprisingly unknown. Upon arrival in St. Petersburg, foreigners make a beeline for the Hermitage; but few foreigners can be seen in the halls of the Russian Museum on any given day.

Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, prides himself on being a Friend of the Russian Museum and was in attendance at the recent 100th anniversary celebrations. But he said that being the home of the greatest collection of Russian art in the world can actually work against a museum.

"Since most Russian art is inside Russia, few people outside of Russia have had much exposure to [it]," he said.

Others argue, in whispers, that many of the painters the museum collects are rightly anonymous. According to one art historian at the Russian Museum, many beloved Russian artists dating before the avant-garde do not keep pace with their European contemporaries.

"Someone like [Ilya] Repin, for example, is really a second-rate painter, but he's the most prominent Russian painter of the 19th century and one loved by many Russians," said the art historian, who asked not to be identified.

This is particularly so when artists dwell on Russian national themes that have less appeal to foreigners. For example, it is doubtful that a foreigner is touched the way a Russian can be by Vasily Polenov's "Moscow Courtyard," (1878), which is a rather simple and mediocre painting of a city courtyard, that looks strikingly rural, and which is overshadowed by an onion-domed church.

"It is sometimes difficult to work at the Russian Museum because it is a conservative institution," said Alexander Barovsky, who has headed the Russian Museum's contemporary art department since its founding 10 years ago. "Also, the average Russian visitor is not prepared at all to see contemporary art."

Dealing with contemporary art has posed great challenges to the museum, and some local artists and art historians feel that the museum still has much work to do in this field.

"[The Russian Museum] is too conservative and unsure of where to go, what to do. It still has not found its place in the modern world," said Viktor Nikolayev, an artist and president of the Social Protection Fund of St. Petersburg Artists, an organization helping contemporary artists.

But Barovsky said that great progress has been made over the past 10 years. "My [contemporary art] department works like a testing ground of contemporary art, because it is a place for showing new work," he said.

In any case, these are the sort of minor quibbles and dissatisfactions that surround any truly great institution. The Russian Museum, like art itself, continues to live, to grow and to experiment. It has not only survived but has flourished in the last 100 years, and seems sure to continue to grow for another 100.