Russia to Royal Academy: Our Paintings Stay Home
by Zoe Strimpel
Thu, 20 Dec 2007 at 1:05 PM
Diplomatic relations between Britain and Russia soured further today after Russian authorities canceled a major forthcoming show at the Royal Academy of Arts. The show, "From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870–1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg," was to have opened January 26 and run for 13 weeks, and the Royal Academy had been preparing for it for two years. It was to have shown more than 120 pieces never before seen together in the U.K. Among them were works by Gauguin, Renoir, Cézanne and Kandinsky, some of which were taken from private collections after the revolution in 1917. The Academy has no fallback plan if the show doesn't happen.
Russia justified its actions by expressing fear that some of the paintings could be seized to settle private legal claims, despite British ministers having confirmed this would not happen. Moscow's Federal Cultural Service on Culture and Cinematography said the show could not proceed unless it had further legal guarantees — from the British state, not just the cultural ministry.
The exhibition was to have featured an assortment of works from Russia's four main state collections: the Pushkin Museum, the Tretyakov Museum, the Hermitage Museum, and the Russian Museum. James Purnell, the British culture minister, told the BBC's "World at One" program that he will try to "go the extra mile" to meet Russian requirements because the exhibition is so important.
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