MOSCOW (RIA Novosti commentator Olga Sobolevskaya) - In September the United States will see the most comprehensive display of Russian art in its history.
The exhibition "Russia!" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York will feature the history of Russian art throughout the last eight centuries - from 12th century icons to modern installations and conceptualism. The ambitious $4 million project is timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the United Nations.
The organizers want the exhibition to have a political impact. According to Mikhail Shvydkoi, head of the Russian Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, the exhibition "Russia!" is a political event bound to form a positive image for the country. "Russia must have a serious art presentation during the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the UN," he said.
"Russia!" will feature masterpieces from the most famous museums, including the State Hermitage and the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and the Tretyakov Gallery and the Kremlin museums in Moscow. The exhibition primarily has an educational mission.
U.S. knowledge of Russian art history is usually limited to avant-garde artists of the first quarter of the 20th century - Kasimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, etc. Other Russian painters are known only by a few art connoisseurs. Russian icon painting is known in a rather general way in the West. Prominent icon painters Andrei Rublyov (1360-1430) and Dionisy (1440-1503), as well as classical artists of the 18th-19th centuries are virtually unknown in America. "Russia!" will be a comprehensive display of Russia's achievements in world art.
Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky said the exhibition would be "ceremonial and official" on the one hand, and academic and conceptual on the other hand. It will feature about 300 masterpieces of Russian painting and sculpture, as well as the art collections of rulers Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Nicholas I, and art patron Savva Morozov.
Exhibits from the Kremlin will be on display in the Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas.
The Guggenheim Foundation has close ties with many Russian museums. The New York branch hosted the exhibitions The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932 and Amazons of the Avant-Garde and presented major works by Chagall and Malevich. The collaboration between the Guggenheim Foundation and the St. Petersburg State Hermitage Museum was a unique project in the history of world art.
However, collections of other Russian museums, such as the Pushkin State Fine Arts Museum, the Kremlin museums, and the Russian History Museum in Moscow, often travel overseas to impress a Western audience.
The "Russia!" exhibition will be an event on an unprecedented scale. If the Americans provide additional exposition halls, the list of Russian participants will be extended.
