Ukrainian “Grad” destroyed the Donetsk Art Museum: the paintings were not evacuated
[ad_1]
On December 6, the Ukrainian army once again hit the central part of Donetsk, including under fire a five-story building, on the ground floor of which the Donetsk Republican Art Museum is located. As a result of the explosion, most of the window blocks collapsed inside the museum premises, and the plaster was also significantly destroyed. It is frosty outside the window, and if there were exhibits in the hall that require the strictest observance of the temperature and humidity regime, their fate would be deplorable.
It would seem that the Donetsk Museum is not a metropolitan, regional museum. Stalino (as the city used to be called) completely lost its collection of paintings during the years of Nazi occupation, and the Center, as compensation, generously endowed the heroic land, which provides coal and metal to the entire Soviet Union, with originals or at least author’s repetitions of paintings by Aivazovsky, Shishkin, Surikov, Vasnetsov, Polenov , Kiprensky, Kustodiev, Laktionov, Nesterov, Zinaida Serebryakova and Pyotr Konchalovsky.
In a publication on the MK website dated February 23, our correspondent asked museum curators if they were going to take dozens of masterpieces to Russia in the event of an acute phase of the crisis. “It is not in our competence to resolve such issues,” the museum workers reasonably answered. As of December 7, 2022, the paintings remain in a special vault. It is clear that in a fortified and protected. But this time, a Grad MLRS shell exploded not far from the exhibition halls. And what will happen tomorrow?
“We do not yet know how the damage will look in financial terms. But we see that our premises suffered both outside and inside. Serious damage to the structure of the building was not revealed. However, serious repairs will be required: the plaster has collapsed, out of twenty-one blocks, thirteen will have to be completely replaced – they, together with the gratings, flew inside, ”says Gennady Polyansky, director of the DRCM.
– In the photo we see a sculpture of Pushkin, lightly powdered with whitewash. Does this mean that there were exhibits in the halls?
— No, we dismantled all the exhibits back in February. It’s just that this sculpture is very heavy. She stood near the window in the corner, she was covered a little. It’s granite, not white marble, nothing happened to it. And our main values are in the fund depository.
Did it take a hit?
– He’s all right. There were four security officers in the museum, they were on duty all night. And the safety of the funds was monitored remotely from the consoles.
— Is it possible to observe the temperature regime in the picture bin?
– Yes. Our heating is in order, not a single battery has defrosted. Even in one of the halls, where the glazing has survived, it is now warm. We sew up the windows with OSB boards, then close the top with a film. Instruments installed in the storage show that both temperature and humidity are normal.
– Will the issue of evacuating the main treasures of the museum be worked out?
— The issue of the evacuation of works of fine art is quite complicated. There are certain requirements for packaging, which must protect against mechanical damage, and for the transportation of cultural property. Currently, there are no guarantees that the collections of the DRCM will not be damaged during transportation through the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
The situation is bleak. The shelling, which has become barbaric in recent days, not only threatens the works of painters of the past, but also hinders the work of the current masters of the brush. For example, the Union of Artists of the DPR cannot function normally either organizationally or creatively. The general meeting scheduled for December 3 had to be cancelled. Although it was supposed to decide a fateful question. Chairman of the Union Melik Aghabekyan says:
– Recently in Lugansk we met with the Executive Director of the Union of Artists of the Russian Federation Marina Rogatovskaya and an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts Tatyana Boitsova. We agreed on the entry of Donetsk residents into the Union of Artists of Russia and the organization of a branch of the Union in Donetsk. Twenty-one applications for admission to it have already been written. At the meeting of the secretariat, they were considered and they were given the go-ahead. And I wanted to gather everyone to pass this information on to the artists. We wanted to integrate; and that’s how it seems to work. But now it is very dangerous to hold meetings. Vatutina Avenue, where the House of Artists is located, has already arrived three times.
– How many members of the Union of Artists are there in the republic and how many will join the Russian professional association?
We have 76 people in total. But we have been stewing in our own juice for eight years, and now we are entering a different level, we need to comply.
— How do your colleagues manage to create in such unthinkable conditions?
“They bomb every day, and you don’t know when it will hit. Our workshops are located in two former buildings of the Union of Artists of the USSR. You come, just changed clothes, just tuned in – bang! And when they started shooting from morning to evening, we decided that we would sit at home for a while. Although I was in the workshop yesterday. And the shell fell into the yard. And we are preparing to participate in the Industrial Donbass exhibition in St. Petersburg. And in the Moscow region project “Donbass – Russia. General History. They collected all the works in the republican museum – the glass flew there. And before that, in my office and in the archive. The workshops were bombed in June, we got new windows, this time they held up, although the shop windows collapsed on the floor below. That is how we live.
The Donetsk Art Museum was founded on September 23, 1939 in Stalino (the former name of Donetsk) as the Museum of Fine Arts. In 1941 it ceased to exist. It was revived after the Second World War, since 1958 – as a department of fine arts of the local history museum, since 1960 – as an independent Stalin art gallery. Renamed in 1965 into an art museum, had the status of a regional institution until 2014, then became a republican one. Visiting cards of the museum: “Azure Grotto. Naples”, “Seascape. Koktebel” by Aivazovsky, “Guard in the Forest”, “Birch Forest” by Shishkin, “Portrait of the Artist Iosif Krachkovsky” by Surikov, “Guardian” by Vasnetsov (the author’s repetition of the painting of the same name).
Newspaper headline:
Aivazovsky and Vasnetsov under bombs
[ad_2]
Source link
