Relatives of the legendary director of the Pushkin Museum Antonova put her archive up for auction

A strange story unfolds around the legacy of Irina Aleksandrovna Antonova, who headed the Pushkin Museum for more than half a century. She died three years ago and all her property went to her only son, Boris Rotenberg. As a child, the talented boy was given a disappointing diagnosis – autism. After the death of Irina Antonova, the Pushkin Museum took care of Boris, but in July last year, Rotenberg died of heart failure. Antonova did not leave a will, so all her legacy went to distant relatives. And they did not want to transfer the archive to the museum, but instead put it up for auction. How valuable are the books that will soon go under the hammer, and whether the Pushkin Museum and other art institutions will participate in the auction, MK understood.

Catalogs from exhibitions, books on art from different eras, brochures and museum guides – several thousand lots from the family archive of Irina Antonova and her husband, the famous art historian Yevsey Rotenberg, will be sold by auction in four stages. The first auction will take place on August 30, the final one on September 2. At what prices it is difficult to understand, bidding for each lot will start from 100 rubles. At least that’s what it says on the auction house’s website. But, as is customary in the auction business, each lot has its own reserve – the minimum amount for which the owner is ready to part with it. It is impossible to know this minimum in advance. Hype has already risen around the treasures put up for auction. First of all, due to the fact that the archive of Irina Antonova is unthinkable outside the walls of her native Pushkin Museum.

In addition, being the director of the Pushkin Museum, Marina Loshak, Antonova’s successor, was going to name one of the buildings of the future museum town after Irina Aleksandrovna: the Antonov Center was supposed to be engaged in advanced humanitarian research. At the same time, she said that Antonova’s archive would be studied, catalogued and shown to the public as an important part of the history of the museum and one of its key directors. When information recently appeared that the distant relatives of Irina Antonova and Yevsey Rotenberg, who had inherited, refused to transfer or sell the family archive of the Pushkin Museum, Loshak offered to buy the library. Everyone who works in Pushkinsky would like this. But the negotiations stalled, and now the library is up for auction.

Here it is worth clarifying that Irina Antonova, who died at the age of 99, did not leave a will. Therefore, for some time there was silence around her inheritance: distant relatives sorted out among themselves and entered into their rights. “MK” became aware that there are several heirs: two of them from the side of Yevsey Rotenberg are the son and grandson of his sister Galina, and one is a distant relative from the side of Irina Alexandrovna – Alexander Rafailovich Antonov. Recently, the Pushkin Museum commented on the situation: “The Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin has repeatedly voiced his interest and readiness to acquire this collection of publications. Unfortunately, the corresponding proposal to the Pushkin Museum was not made by the heirs.” Approximately the same in a telephone conversation with “MK” said the current director of the museum, Elizaveta Likhacheva.

– Antonova’s relatives can legally do with the inheritance what they see fit. We would like the archive to end up in the Pushkin Museum, but what should I do in this situation: ask the Ministry of Culture for a couple of million? We cannot know in advance what is what. Irina Antonova did not leave a will. If she wanted these books to end up in a museum, she would write about it. But there is nothing. Everything she wanted to leave in the museum, she brought here during her lifetime.

Indeed, Irina Antonova kept the most valuable part of her library and working documentation in her office. It was always littered with papers, and several bookcases were densely stocked with rare publications. Now most of these archives are in the department of manuscripts of the Pushkin Museum or in the museum library. Some of Irina Alexandrovna’s papers could be seen at the exhibition “Director’s Office”.

In fairness, it should also be clarified that much of what was put up for auction belonged to Irina Alexandrovna’s husband, Yevsey Rotenberg, a well-known art critic, one of the largest domestic experts in the history and theory of Western European art of the 16th-17th centuries. He also once worked in the Pushkin Museum – from 1947 to 1953. And he was one of those employees who took custody of the Dresden Gallery. Later, Rotenberg worked in the sector of Western European art at the Research Institute of Theory and History of Art of the USSR Academy of Arts. But most of his life Yevsey Iosifovich worked at home. By nature, he was an introvert, such people are called “armchair scientists.” Accordingly, the books and materials with which he worked were at home. Yevsey Rotenberg died in 2011. His entire archive remained with his wife and son. That is, to announce the auction as a sale of the archives of the exclusively legendary Antonova is more of a PR stunt. This is first.

Secondly, among the exhibited items there are those that are not of particular museum interest. For example, there are many catalogs that are easy to find on sale. There are, of course, rare editions, but not all. “As is often the case with books that still retain the status of some kind of sacredness for many in our country, there is always a lot of noise,” says bibliophile and employee of the Tretyakov Gallery Maxim Pavlov. – At the same time, in any case, according to the analysis of what is put up for auction, the personal library of the IA does not bear the signs of a scientific library (selected specifically and systematically as a result of many years of effort), but is, on the one hand, a library of gifts, and on the other reflects her personal interests to a greater extent – that is why she is interesting as a complex, if, of course, some kind of “museification” of the mistress’s biography was planned. Undoubtedly, among the items put up for auction there are books and catalogs with autographs of museum interest, although even the foreign part of the library is (with a few exceptions) not very great book rarities. The most valuable part of the collection is museum posters of foreign exhibitions (and here, if I were in the place of the Pushkin Museum, I would definitely buy them from the auction house, unless, of course, their duplicates are already stored in the funds of the museum itself).”

That is, if you hunt for the “Antonova library”, then you need to do it properly, with the arrangement. With understanding. According to MK, employees of the Pushkin and other art institutions that are friendly to the museum will still try to buy out the most valuable items. Among these, for example, are rare catalogs of Western exhibitions and publications on musical and theatrical themes that characterize the tastes of Irina Alexandrovna.

But in general, the hype around the sale, to put it mildly, is exaggerated, largely due to the legendary owner of the archive, on whose behalf they are now trying to make money. In this situation, on the one hand, it is disgusting, on the other hand, it is gratifying that they remember about Irina Aleksandrovna. Although it would be better if her name sounded in a different context.