Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum
Megan Stack of the LA Times has reported that an audit of Russian museums, ordered by then President Vladimir Putin after the 2006 discovery of the theft (which was an inside job) of about 226 objects from the State Hermitage Museum, revealed that “at least 87,000 pieces have vanished. Hundreds of those belonged to the
Hermitage.”
Only 87,000 objects? That’s a big improvement! (But “hundreds” from the Hermitage is worse than the 226 that had been deemed missing after the discovery of the theft that prompted the audit.)
As CultureGrrl reported back in July 2007:
Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev [now Putin’s successor as Russia’s President]
announced yesterday the results of an inventory of Russian museum
collections: More than 160,000 artifacts [emphasis added] are said to be missing.
Perhaps many of those were misplaced and later located. According to the Times’ Stack: “The Russian government is eager to downplay the findings. Many of the
missing items were of minor interest, officials insist.”
Here’s the list of the initially reported group of 226 objects stolen from the Hermitage, some of which were later returned.
Not mentioned in the Times piece: Nikolai Zavadsky was tried and sentenced for stealing 77 of the Hermitage works in cahoots with his late wife, curator Larisa Zavadskaya, who had been in charge of the museum’s Department of Russian Culture.