The director of the Pushkin Museum was replaced after half a century

On July 1, the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky dismissed from his post the director of the State Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin Irina Antonova.

Irina Antonova, who turned 91 in April 2013, has directed the Pushkin Museum for 52 years. Vladimir Medinsky announced her resignation at a briefing on July 1, and the dismissal order was signed by President Vladimir Putin last week. “This is a legendary man who made the Pushkin Museum a legend. We are infinitely grateful to Irina Aleksandrovna,” the minister said. According to him, Antonova will remain the honorary president of the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin.

“I am almost certain that the resignation is connected only with Antonova’s advanced age,” Marat Gelman shared with The New Times. In his opinion, the management of the museum requires hard daily work, which is no longer so easy for Antonova to do, although this does not detract from her merits.

Now the post of director of the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin will be occupied by art historian Marina Loshak, former art director of the Moscow Museum and Exhibition Association "Capital". Antonova herself welcomes the appointment of Loshak, it was she who proposed her as her successor. “The fact that Marina Loshak will become the new director of the Pushkin Museum is very good. She will be a worthy successor to Antonova's work and adhere to her leadership line. All of us are far from Antonov's mastery, but I think that Marina will cope, ”the artist Aidan Salakhova commented on the changes in the Pushkin Museum to The New Times.

“Marina Loshak will have to form a special concept for working with contemporary art. She also needs to think about the future of the Museum Quarter. In addition, the museum has a so-called "birth trauma" - a collection of copies for which you need to make a museum training center. I hope that Marina Loshak will start a new stage in the history of the Pushkin Museum,” Marat Gelman shared his views on the future of the museum with The New Times.

Irina Antonova became the director of the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin in 1961, she was the organizer of major international exhibitions. “Irina Antonova served the state even when it hurt her reputation. For example, she spoke to her colleagues for a long time about the fact that there is no trophy art, and then it turned out that these copies were in the storerooms of the Pushkin Museum, ”recalls Marat Gelman. Recently, Antonova took the initiative to restore the State Museum of New Western Art, which was liquidated on the orders of Joseph Stalin. (The New Times wrote about the fate of the "repressed" museum). On this occasion, a discussion broke out among cultural figures - the revival of the Museum of New Western Art required the transfer of part of the paintings from the Hermitage to Moscow.