“It is not inconceivable that if total inspections of museums will be started now, the number of spontaneous ignitions, short circuits, floods and all the like stuff will become enormous,” argues Yuri Tyukhtin, Director of Sovkom Gallery.
In 2000, in serial “The Bandit Petersburg” based on the novel by Andrei Konstantinov, Mafia Boss called Baron informed Andrey Seregin, a journalist, that there are copies hanging in the Hermitage, while the originals have been quietly sold off years ago. The recent events demonstrated that one can steal from museum store-rooms not even bothering about any substitution.
In August 2005, a scheduled checkout started of the department of the Russian Culture Fund. Then, in October 2005, 46-year old curator of the department Larissa Zavadskaya suddenly deceased of heart attack. The store-rooms were sealed up and, in April 2006, delivered to a new employee that was the one who revealed shortage of 221 units of issue including icons, crosses to store relics in, silver chalices, Easter eggs, table solver-ware, animal figures (mainly, fake Faberge items), cigarette-cases, photograph frames, clocks, powder-boxes, mirrors, etc. According to estimates by the Hermitage, in general, the value of the artifacts stolen amounted to 130 million Roubles. Pursuit of the displays lasted several months as in the Hermitage there are 2.8 million units of issue. Something could have been plainly mislaid. (For instance, in June 2006, in the Russian Museum’s branch, the Inzhenerni Zamok, owing to negligence of the curators, five pieces of the hunting service of the 18th century were lost but then quickly found in the museum’s premises.) No such wonder happened in the Hermitage. In the second decade of July, Director of the Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovski received a memorandum about the ‘deficit’. On 27 July, a final verification certification was prepared, and formal appeals to the competent bodies were made. The criminal case was initiated under Article 158 of the Criminal Code (“Larceny”).On 2 August, the Hermitage published on its web-site a complete schedule of the lost items. This led to results: it was already on the next day that the wooden icon “Council of All Saints” (1893) was abandoned into a garbage container by the 9th department of the Saint-Petersburg Criminal Investigation Department, the officers of which investigate the larceny at the Hermitage, that is the most valuable exhibit of all those stolen (No. 97) valued at approximately USD200 thousand. Then, some ‘conscientious’ citizens started abandoning or plainly returning the stolen items (at the point when this issue was signed 16 artifacts had been returned). The Rosokhrankultura (the Russian Commission of Culture Preservation) gave an announcement in magazine “Antiques, Pieces of Art and Collectibles”, examine catalogues of foreign trading houses and auctions such as Christie’s, Sotheby’s, as well as Bukowskis in Sweden and Uppsala in Finland, and asked for help the Russian Conference of antiquarians and art dealers. The appeal was of help: on 4 August, Galina Oistrakh, the director of Moscow antique exhibition Orthodox Antique that is a member of the Confederation, returned to the Rosokhrankultura a silver chalice (No. 64) valued no less than $100 thousands, which came to antiquarians back in 2004. What is amazing here, the chalice was exhibited at the Antiquarian Show in the Central House of Artists (TsDKh). Via the salon, using available passport particulars, detectives traced a former owner of the chalice, antique dealer Maxim Shepel. On 6 August, suspects of the larceny were arrested. They were the son and the husband of the deceased curator, Nikolai and Nikolai Zavadskies. According to the investigators’ version, they took out the museum valuables while Shepel acted as their art dealer. Besides, during search in the Zavadskies’ flat, over a hundred of receipts were found that had been issued by various pawn-shops. Subsequently, senior Zavadski confessed to the investigators that he had pawned 53 items at two pawn-shops of Saint-Petersburg during these two years.
Concurrently, another museum-related scandal happened. The management of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts (RGALI) overlooked loss of a hundred sheets of drawings by famous architect Jacob Chernikhov, out of which nine were exhibited at Christie’s. They could have been bought but for interference of the stepson of the famous architect, Andrei Chernikhov. The museum declared the loss and managed to retrieve the drawings. Another 250 sheets preliminary valued at $1.3 million were detained in the domestic market of arts. Eighty per cent of the drawings kept at the RGALI turned out to be a substitution. And these were not copies but ‘dolls’, something like constructivism. In total, about 3 thousand drawings of the architect are stored in the archive.
Who steals? What is stolen?
According to the Rosokhrankultura, 70 to 100 larcenies from museums are registered every year in Russia. For instance, in 2000, over 300 works disappeared from the State Historical Museum, then, 180 units were stolen from the collection of the Petropavlovskaya Krepost. By way of comparison: in France, 5 thousand displays are stolen from museums yearly.
Museum thefts can be divided in two categories. The first category is when persons from the outside steal, often upon collusion with museum staffers. The second is when staffers steal. According to the Rosokhrankultura, the number of outsiders’ thefts from museums reduces two times while, on the contrary, insiders’ thefts increase swiftly.
It is understood while museums are rarely broken. Today there are monitoring cameras, more powerful computers and state-of-the-art alarm systems. Special tags are developed now that will be applied on items similar to barcodes. Admittedly, the measures have not prevented one of the boldest thefts: on 30 June 2005, a thief overcame several lines of protection and stole 9 items from the show-room of the Federal Archives. The items lost included a golden honorary badge of the member of NSDAP, which Adolph Hitler permanently wore on the right side of his coats, his party membership card, military cards of Hitler’s security head Hans Rattenhuber and other servicemen. Despite that the alarm system snapped into action, the thief managed to extricate back and vanish away before the militia ever appeared.
One can challenge the issue of increase in the number of insiders’ thefts. “Recently, verifications are started in museums which have not been seriously conducted before,” says Chairman of Board of the National Organization of Experts in Arts (NOEXI) and General Manager of the State Museum and Exhibition Center of the Ministry of Culture of Russia (ROSIZO) Eugenie Zyablov. – “Recent checkups only disclose what has been lasting for decades.” General Manager of the Russian Museum Vladimir Gusev agrees with him: “In the Soviet period, certain losses were veiled as both for a director and a curator this meant end of their lives: they were fired from the Party and lost their jobs. That is why people kept silent in attempt to put off till pension»”. The magnitude of the problem is witnessed by the statement made by the former deputy of the Chairman of the Accounting Chamber Yuri Boldyrev on the air of radio station “Echo Moskvy”: “In 2000, during the checkout at the Hermitage, it was found that only three items were available out of 50 displays selected at random from various departments. The case was not initiated then, and the displays were soon found.” In the same way the situation is estimated by private gallery owners. “It is not inconceivable that if total verifications of museums will be started now, the number of spontaneous ignitions, short circuits, floods and all the like stuff will become enormous,” argues Yuri Tyukhtin, Director of Sovkom Gallery. “I admit that substitutions are in common practice too, so I would recommend paying attention during such verifications not only to physical presence of the items but to their authenticity as well.”
“Criminals’ attention is attracted first of all by the items for which there is market demand, and second, the displays that are hard to identify,” explains Eugenie Zyablov. - “There is constant requisition for icons, then go jewelry, and only after them go paintings that are attractive due to their high values.” “When something disappears from a museum it is rather the items that were placed there for custody during different periods and, without any studying, entered into inventories under numbers,” Valery Dudakov believes. - “And subsequently, everybody forgot about them; books could be mislaid, too. In view of the fact that stock taking in museums is rarely conducted, such thefts can remain undiscovered for years. Regular selling of small applied-art items is a way to receiving regular gains for museum staffers. Applied-art items are easier for them to sell in the market. They are easier for them to steal. And it is very often that in respect to the items, there is only a description, based on which it is very difficult to identify them.” Ekaterina Selezneva, Senior Curator of the State Tretiakov Gallery, agrees with him: “Most of all, the items of applied arts such as commercial goods of precious metals are stolen. They prefer not to take unique things, as it is extremely difficult to dispose of them later. By the way, if you come to look through the schedule from the Hermitage, you will see that all the items are by no means masterpieces, though their market value is rather high. The displays were selected very competently. They took things that had been sitting in stock for decades and could do so for years on, instead of exposition things which form the traveling fund.”
ENG
Рус
SOVCOM in social networks: