Hermitage Theft Repercussions

The American media have largely abandoned the State Hermitage Museum’s theft saga, moving on to the latest museum-theft news, but the much more extensive Russian heist is still an actively developing story in its own country.
The St. Petersburg Times has reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the establishment of a commission, due to start work today, that would “revise and audit the collections of Russia’s museums.” That commission was to include “representatives of the Interior Ministry, the Culture Ministry, the security services and other state organizations.”
The Hermitage has now posted on its website photos of some of the 221 objects stolen from its Department of Russian Culture.
Also recently posted: the Declaration of the Presidium of the Union of Russian Museums, which takes a hard line against museums’ critics. The joint statement lambasts the following as “utterly unacceptable”:
For anyone, whether agencies of the executive branch of government, the press, the domestic lobby of antiques dealers, business associations, to use the situation that has developed around the State Hermitage to lobby the President, the Parliament and the Government for the privatization of museums in some overt or hidden form through transfers to autonomous institutions, self-regulating organizations, transfer on the basis of concession or otherwise.
The declaration, dated Aug. 15, also decries “the witch hunt against the country’s museums,” which, it says, “can only have one goal: to sweep away the last obstacles on the path to privatizing the country’s cultural heritage and dividing up the national legacy….We are ready to do everything we can to oppose such intentions. We believe that Russia’s citizens will support us in this matter.”
The St. Petersburg Times also reported this reaction from the Hermitage’s embattled director:
Mikhail Piotrovsky…speculated that the scandal around the theft is being artificially inflated in the interests of antique dealers who nurture plans to privatize Russia’s finest art galleries.
“Museums and galleries are the only spheres of Russian culture that are still off-limits for the ravenous business elites,” he said. “So, the interested sides apparently felt that they must use our plight to seize the moment, take over the last bastion and push privatization plans ahead.”
From all this, it appears that the aftermath of the Hermitage theft will be characterized by acrimony and power struggles, rather than by the spirit of cooperation needed to solve Russia’s serious museum-security crisis.