December 2005The State Hermitage Museum is to end all loans to its gallery in London, unless the British government provides guarantees against the seizure of works of art. This follows the temporary impounding on 15 November of $1 billion worth of French paintings owned by the Pushkin Museum, which had been exhibited in Switzerland. The works were released the following day, after urgent intervention by the Swiss federal government.
The next show with Hermitage loans scheduled to open on 30 March at Somerset House is “The road to Byzantium” which is to display luxury objects from antiquity.
The Hermitage director warned that no Russian museum would be able to lend to any UK venue. Among the exhibitions next year which would be badly affected is Tate Modern’s show on Kandinsky, opening on 9 June. The Tate says this is due to include a key group of pictures from public collections in Russia.
Last month’s international loan crisis developed after four trucks containing 55 paintings from Moscow’s Pushkin Museum were impounded after they had left Martigny, where they had been at the Pierre Gianadda Foundation, in an exhibition which closed on 13 November. The legal action was initiated by Noga, a Geneva-based trading company run by Nessim Gaon which claims it is owed money from the Russian government for a food-for-oil deal in 1991. The amount claimed is around $100 million. As Professor Piotrovsky put it, “works of art are now being used as hostages in trading disputes.”
Noga got the Valais canton authorities to impound the Pushkin paintings, on the grounds that the museum was state owned, and the trading company had a claim against the Russian state. Three trucks with Pushkin paintings were stopped at the Swiss-German border, near Basel, at 8pm on 15 November. A fourth vehicle was impounded outside Geneva, on the border with France. Initially there were fears that air conditioning on the vehicles had been switched off, which could have damaged the pictures.
The consignment included works by Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Boucher, Corot, Millet, Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso. They were valued at $1 billion.
Switzerland’s Federal Council intervened the following day, overruling the Valais decision. It issued a statement, saying: “In international law, national cultural goods are regarded as public property, which may not be confiscated.” The four trucks were allowed to proceed. Although this resolved the immediate crisis, it has created considerable uncertainty, and the Russian government and its museums are now seeking firm guarantees against future seizure.
Professor Piotrovsky announced that he would end all loans to Swiss venues, until he has undertakings that individual cantons will refuse to impound works of art.
The Hermitage currently has loans to an exhibition on the Dalai Lama at Zurich University which runs until 30 April 2006, and these may be withdrawn.
The danger of the seizure of works of art appears to be increasing, and it was the subject of a conference in London on 30 September organised by the Club of Three, a private group set up by Lord Weidenfeld to foster good relations between America, Europe and Russia.
The governments of the United States, France and Germany already provide guarantees against seizure. The Netherlands, home of a Hermitage satellite museum in Amsterdam, does not provide formal guarantees, although the Dutch foreign affairs minister can provide a letter guaranteeing that it will do everything within its power not to allow works of art to be encumbered. It is not yet clear whether this will continue to remain satisfactory to the Hermitage and the Russian government.
