Excommunicated

The fate of the Tretyakov collection of contemporary art is alarming

In recent days, two press conferences have been held about something very sad: by order of the General Director of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Valentin Rodionov, the head of the gallery’s newest trends department, Andrei Erofeev, was fired. Official reason: violation of accounting and storage of museum valuables. Last week, the leaders of the Tretyakov Gallery gathered critics.Director Valentin Rodionov , deputy director Irina Lebedeva, and chief curator Ekaterina Selezneva convinced those invited that five reprimands were impossible. That half of the contemporary art funds brought into the walls of the Tretyakov Gallery have not been inventoried due to Erofeev’s reluctance to live according to the norms of museum life . Which is no good. That due to the negligence of the department’s employees, nothing can be found, and permanent storage was issued only a few days ago. And in general you can’t live like that.

Yes, you can't. Only for completely different reasons. First: the dismissal order can be assessed in moral and ethical categories. Then it is worth admitting that on the part of the leadership of the State Tretyakov Gallery we have ordinary meanness. The person under investigation was fired. The far right accused him and the director of the Sakharov Center, Yuri Samodurov, of inciting hostility and religious hatred after the Forbidden Art exhibition. Erofeev faces a trial, a sentence, a prison term in the end. And now he will come to this court unemployed, with dismissal for unsuitability. Judging art is insane by all civil standards. In order to preserve itself, the artistic community sided with Erofeev. But the Tretyakov Gallery, apparently, does not consider it possible to be involved in this community. The reputation of the institution - the largest collection of Russian art in the country - has been radically damaged. When the management was asked why the dismissal could not wait until the trial, the bosses innocently said that they did not know about Erofeev as an accused, but believed that he was only serving as a witness. If you believe them, then everything is even worse. It turns out that the Tretyakov Gallery administration voluntarily chose an information blockade, cut off from news and current life. That is, this is how she confirmed her own professional incompetence.

The second reason is that you can’t live exactly like this: dismissal after the funds were finally inventoried by the employees of the Erofeyevsky department, working day and night for six months. That is, despite the obviously impossible demands of the administration, the professionals from the department got the job done. And now that the funds have been described, the department is being decapitated. Employees naturally take vacations. Many with subsequent dismissal. All this is bad and unhygienic.

The nature of this incident was revealed during the second press conference, which was organized yesterday by the injured party - Erofeev, artists, employees of the department of new trends. The sad thing is that formally the administrators of the Tretyakov Gallery, who fired the best curator who returned viewers to the building on Krymsky, acted on legal grounds. They worked according to instructions. And according to it, funds that have not been inventoried in any way cannot be stored on the premises of the State Tretyakov Gallery. Items accepted for temporary storage should not be kept for too long. In addition, we have problems with OXI. Created specifically for the Erofeev collection, which began to take shape at the Tsaritsyno Museum 20 years ago, the expert Society of Contemporary Art Collectors (OCSI) served as interim storage. OXI took things that were not transferred to the museum due to the lack of education of museum workers about what contemporary art is and what its artistic (and other) value is. In many cases, things recorded on OXI have not been transferred for permanent storage to the State Tretyakov Gallery to this day. And they seemed to freeze. And the management also needs to be accountable for them. So here's the most important thing. Respected directors and custodians brought up all these arguments as compromising the work of Erofeev and his department. But you can turn everything exactly the opposite. Instead of standing up for the strength of instructions written a hundred years ago, wouldn’t it be better, having understood the specifics of the material with which the department of new trends works, to rewrite these instructions. Wouldn’t it be better not to act according to the scheme of bureaucratic casuistry, but to enter into a dialogue with the department? Understand that he is working with artists involved in hyperactive exhibition activities, who cannot immediately put their works to rest in the depths (in many cases, the Tretyakov Gallery itself cannot decide to accept works proposed by the newest department through OXI), that very often it is necessary to attract works from personal collections (in the State Tretyakov Gallery, purchases of contemporary art are scanty), that the traditional stock classification in the case of installations and video art is also not suitable. What if we put on the scales the violated storage protocols for newly received works and hundreds of works donated to the collection that ended up in the Tretyakov Gallery thanks to the dedication of the department’s employees and the authority of Erofeev himself, then any sane person will see: it will be the contribution to culture that wins, not the bureaucracy.

At yesterday's press conference, Andrei Erofeev clearly formulated: the Tretyakov Gallery, like most traditional Russian museums, is not ready to integrate into the format of a modern, dynamically developing museum that fits into the global context of the museum. A look at art (even at the Wanderers and mammoths) is interesting from today. The Tretyakov Gallery looks at today from yesterday. In addition to storage, the museum is obliged to educate and help build new meanings. This is the kind of museum that is new to our country and Andrei will be in charge (let’s hope that the threats of scrip and prison will pass by). His plans include the creation of an institution organized on a corporate principle with the participation of both the state (Ministry of Culture) and funds from private sponsors and philanthropists. He announced this news.

But what will happen to the collection that he and his accomplices have already placed in the State Tretyakov Gallery? Pessimistic forecast: the entire department will be disbanded. The collection will be distributed to other departments with typical Soviet art as ballast that no one needs in the established Tretyakov Gallery team. So it will forever gather dust in drawers. Optimistic forecast: the psychology of those working at the State Tretyakov Gallery will change at least a little; they will finally, instead of permanent confrontation, look for ways of dialogue. Thanks to guest curators, the collection will be displayed at exhibitions. The department will remain. His employees will not stop adding to the collection. Most likely, in reality there will be reasons for both moderate pessimism and cautious optimism.

Sergei KHACHATUROV