Piotrovsky called the amendments to the law “On Museum Fund” a big step forward

Speaking at a roundtable on the situation with the Trinity, Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage and head of the Union of Museums of Russia, stressed the importance of the amendments to the law “On Museum Funds” adopted the day before. The amendments were submitted for consideration to the State Duma on May 18, and on July 20 they were approved in the first reading. The essence of the adjustments is to protect the museum fund from seizures and to fix the indivisibility of the museum fund of the Russian Federation as much as possible.

“The amendments were adopted in the first reading, this is a big step forward, as museum collections are under numerous blows,” said Mikhail Piotrovsky. He also spoke about the work on the agreement on the transfer of the Nevsky shrine to the free use of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

“This is a very long document, where there are many points and there is an opportunity to return the exhibit. I note that the lawyers of the Russian Orthodox Church inserted a clause stating that cancer is transmitted for 49 years. Initially, the contract was indefinite. Now we are conducting constant monitoring in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, we have drawn up a technical task for the conditions of the shrine itself, and a large engineering study has been carried out. Based on its results, there will be a task to correct those shortcomings that have been found,” Piotrovsky said.

He stressed that now museums around the world are under “constant attack”: they are being charged with the storage of loot and appropriation, when “one cultural sphere takes away elements from another, that is, the museum does not show, for example, African or Chinese objects in the same way.” The discussion about the representation in the museum space of the icon in general and the “Trinity” in particular also falls under this dispute, Piotrovsky is sure.