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Death of Irina Antonova, the "iron lady" of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow

2020-12-03T08:12:08.071Z


This respected and feared intellectual entered it under Stalin, remained there until Putin. At 98, she symbolized a whole era in Russian cultural life.


In June 2019, the Russian capital found, one hundred years later, one of its pioneering figures in the history of modern art, Sergei Chtchoukine.

The Pushkin Museum paid tribute to the great collector and “patron” whose treasures the Vuitton Foundation had collected for the first time in 2016. All these actors were gathered on June 17 in front of

La Danse

de Matisse.

The directors of the two museums, Marina Loshak for the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and Mikhail Piotrovsky for the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.

The Russian Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinski, the representative of the Duma, our French ambassador in Russia, then Sylvie Bermann, Bernard Arnault, president of LVMH.

Little imperial woman, impeccable gray permanent and straight back, Irina Antonova, president of the Pushkin Museum, stood slightly behind, like a general watching over his troops.

This legendary figure of Russian cultural life died on November 30, 2020, of a cardiovascular accident as a result of the coronavirus.

She was 98 years old.

Until the pandemic, she came every day to the Muscovite museum, which she marked with

“her uncompromising will and her inspired enthusiasm”.

His keen sense of politics was his main weapon.

This iron woman tasted exceptional talents, artists, writers, poets, musicians.

His friendship for Chagall was exemplary in this respect.

She was less open with the talents within her own museum which she managed without sharing.

The announcement of his death made the headlines of the Russian press and television news, as it marks the end of an era, an intense and delicate cultural life that began under Stalin and ended under Putin.

In 2002, Putin awarded him the Order of Merit of the Fatherland, second degree.

Over the years, she will obtain the four degrees.

© Pushkin Museum Archives

Even if it means clashing with the latter, a man from Saint Petersburg and proud of his city, she openly campaigned for the reunion of the two halves of the mythical collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov, shared between the Hermitage museums and his Pushkin museum. and therefore separated by thousands of kilometers.

She did not win this duel.

But she actively contributed to the reappearance of the forgotten names of these collectors.

She also supported the initiative of the collector Ilïa Silberstein and founded, in 1994, the Museum of Private Collections, today the Department of Private Collections of the Pushkin Museum.

Irina Antonova - Irina for her relatives, Antonova for others - devoted 75 years of her life to the Pushkin Museum, becoming her very symbol.

Under his direction, this museum whose collections, apart from Impressionist and modern art, are not comparable to those of the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay or the Hermitage, has nevertheless become one of the most important cultural centers in the country. and an institution recognized around the world.

The Pushkin Museum has presented dozens of major exhibitions and, land of musicians and music lovers, the annual

December Evenings

festival

by Sviatoslav Richter

, founded by Irina Antonova and the great pianist forty years ago.

In 2006, she posed with the Russian painter Boris Messerer and his wife, the great poet of the 1970s, Bella Akhmadoulina.

© Pushkin Museum Archives

During World War II Irina Antonova, who had trained as a nurse, worked in a military hospital in Moscow.

This exceptional woman had come out of the ranks of the Institute of Philosophy, Literature and Art which formed until 1941 the Soviet intelligentsia of the 1960s. She had retained a great rigor, an inextinguishable intellectual curiosity and a decisive network for his long career.

A graduate of Moscow State University, she began her career at the Pushkin Museum in April 1945 under Stalin as a curator at the Western European Art Department.

Her parents had worked in Berlin from 1929 to 1933, until Hitler's rise to power, and the young Irina had trained there in the

“Western spirit”

.

Between 1946 and 1949, she did her postgraduate studies at the museum.

The Italian Renaissance was at the center of this research.

Appointed director of the Pushkin Museum in February 1961 by Nikita Krushchev, she remained in this post until July 2013 before becoming its president.

A position created for her and which is likely to disappear with her.

During the decades under his leadership, the Pushkin Museum has had

“the opportunity and the unique mission of bringing the treasures of international artistic culture to generations of Russian audiences,”

says its museum today.

It is thanks to his audacity that the exhibition

Moscow - Paris.

1900-1930

was held in 1981,

"making an important breakthrough, despite the pressing ideological control of the time, in the reconstruction of the reality of Russian culture in the twentieth century

.

"

In 1974, its international reputation allowed it to host in Moscow one of the most famous works of art in the world,

The Mona Lisa

by Leonardo da Vinci.

Having learned that the icon was returning from Japan, she used all her political talent to make a stopover of a few days at the Pushkin Museum.

In 1996, Irina Antonova presented the catalog of the unpublished exhibition, Moscow-Berlin, which will circulate between the two cities.

© Pushkin Museum Archives

The same year, following major repairs to the museum, Irina Antonova dared to reorganize the hanging of the permanent collections.

Despite the critical reception of professionals and public opinion, she decided to considerably reduce the number of plasters on display to make room for the painting collections, especially those of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

The exhibitions organized under his direction bear witness to his vision and his pugnacity:

Treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun

(1973),

Marc Chagall.

100th anniversary of the artist

(1987),

World of the Etruscans

(1990 and 2004),

Moscow - Berlin.

1900–1950

(1996),

Du Côté de chez Proust

(2001),

Russia - Italy.

Across centuries.

From Giotto to Malevich

(2005),

Turner.

1775–1851

(2008),

Alberto Giacometti

(2008) ....

Under his leadership, the museum was enriched with several neighboring buildings, as an ideal palace of art.

The first was that of the current

House of Graphic Arts

, in 1961. Leading woman, Irina Antonova supported the initiative of a

Museum City

, mentioned by Ivan Tsvetaev, the founder of the museum.

The renovation of several buildings is currently underway, so his dream should come true in the years to come, if the pandemic crisis allows it.

Since 1967, on his initiative, the Pushkin Museum has organized an annual scientific

conference Vipper Conference

, in memory of Boris Vipper, eminent art historian.

Barded with titles, honors and medals that she pinned on the strict and chic Chanel or Dior tailors, Irina Antonova had everything a general.

Honorary member of the International Council of Museums, Academician of the Academy of Russian Art, of the Academy of Russian Education, Honorary Doctor of the Russian State University of Humanities, Emeritus Master of Arts of Russia.

She was decorated with several Soviet orders, including the Order of the October Revolution, the Red Flag of Work, the Friendship of Peoples.

She was a full knight of the National Order of Merit and was twice the recipient of the Russian Federation State Prize, in 1995 and 2017.

In 1974, Irina Antonova managed to make an unscheduled stopover at La Mona Lisa, back from Japan.

It arrives here in its case at the Pushkin Museum.

© Pushkin Museum Archives

His reputation had crossed borders.

Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (France), Knight of the Legion of Honor, Irina Antonova was awarded the Gold and Silver Stars of the 'Order of the Rising Sun for its contribution to the development of cultural cooperation between Russia and Japan.

“Until these last days, Irina Antonova lived the life of the museum, participated in the discussion of these long-term plans and these ongoing projects, affirmed her point of view with all her passion and spirit of logic”

, underlines her dear Museum.

Uncompromising, literate, hard worker, Irina Antonova embodied a bygone era, that of the great intellectuals where

"not knowing was a shame, whereas today not having money is a shame"

, explains a young Muscovite.

She still lived in the same apartment, considered luxury in Soviet times but far below contemporary standards in terms of wealth.

She still had her little Fiat in the land of Mercedes and luxury sedans.

It is difficult to imagine the Pushkin Museum without Irina Antonova, she who was its inalienable component, her face, her symbol - part of the myth of the Pushkin Museum.

She entered the museum in 1945 when she was very young and continued to come here almost every day, except for the few months of confinement this year;

that until today.

Even when we weren't talking about business, when I just heard the rustling of papers or the sound of her voice behind her office door, I understood that she was there, I felt her presence.

The presence of a very passionate, very open person, who did not show his love, very sober in his attitude to life,

”testifies Marina Loshak, director of the Pushkin Museum.

"

I can hardly cite another institution of our kind whose image is also intertwined with that of a person as is the case of the Pushkin Museum and Irina Antonova,

" she tells us.

Ms. Antonova was an absolutely fearless person - both professionally and as a personality.

Throughout her career she acted boldly, walked into the future, acted like someone willing to take risks.

His actions were a testament to a person who understood that mission and principles took precedence over the rest, and that, in rather complex times, in the Soviet years when much of what is usual to us today was under ban (...) Each moment of this person's destiny is directly linked to the history of the museum, a victorious and unique history

”.

“Irina?

I have the impression of having always known and frequented her, and we always tried to meet each other, even briefly, in Paris or Moscow

, confides Suzanne Pagé, artistic director of the Vuitton Foundation whose friendship goes back to her days. years at the head of the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris.

“What bound us was very strong, in admiration and affection.

My admiration was based on her great culture, her determination (sometimes feared) and the ambition which had led her to place her museum, whose collection, after all, is worth especially by the prestigious French impressionist works, among the greatest institutions. international, thanks to its intellectual backing, its daring and its network of relationships.

Thus, she was the first to open her museum to the most contemporary international art, also to the idea of ​​a museum-collectors dialogue (she was moreover the first to present a

Shtouchkine - Morozov

exhibition

, in early 1990s in Moscow) ”.

Arrival with fanfare on Jeremy Irons' motorcycle in 2007 for the opening of the exhibition on American art.

© Pushkin Museum Archives

“For me,”

Suzanne Pagé continues, “it

was really an iron fist in the velvet glove.

I had once again experienced its elegance and composure in 2004, during the inauguration of our joint operation

"Matisse"

, with the famous 1932 triptych from the collections of the MAM (Musée d'art moderne de Paris), the day of the tragic massacre of a Chechen school.

During our last meetings, we had passionately discussed the design and catalog of her major project

"Malraux"

, an exhibition she was planning at the time, which once again referred to her great culture and her Francophilia.

I saw her one last time in June 2019 for the presentation of the collection of our Foundation in the entire building of the Impressionist collections of the Pushkin Museum and our dialogue was engaged, always with passion, on the works that she discovered with constant curiosity always on the alert

. "

For her colleagues and comrades, the disappearance of Irina Antonova is "

an immense personal loss, comparable to that of a loved one"

.

For the thousands of visitors to the Pushkin Museum, viewers of its programs on the

Culture

television channel

, the death of Irina Antonova marks the end of the great epoch of Russian cultural life.

In accordance with her wishes, Irina Antonova will be buried in the Novodevichy cemetery near her mother and her husband, an art historian and specialist in the Italian Renaissance like her.

Given the epidemiological situation, meditation will be limited to relatives.

The museum invites to present their condolences by e-mail to antonova@pushkinmuseum.art.

Condolences will be posted on the

Wall of Memory

on the museum's website (pushkinmuseum.art).

In 1975 with Alexis Kosyguine, member of the Politburo, x times minister and key figure in Soviet political and cultural life.

© Pushkin Museum Archives

Source: lefigaro

All life articles on 2020-12-03

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