The daughter of the former head of the FSB Border Service, Elena Pronicheva, lost her post as director of the Tretyakov Gallery. Her sister was appointed to head the Pushkin Museum

Russian Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova announced personnel changes in the country's two largest art museums. Elena Pronicheva, the daughter of the ex-head of the FSB Border Service Vladimir Pronichev, left the post of director of the State Tretyakov Gallery, and her sister Ekaterina Pronicheva was appointed head of the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkin.

The Ministry of Culture stated that Elena Pronicheva left her position of her own free will. The department thanked her for her work, noting the opening of new sites of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, Samara and Kaliningrad. Before her appointment, Ekaterina Pronicheva headed the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve, and previously held senior positions in the Russian Ministry of Culture and the Moscow Department of Culture.

Olga Galaktionova, who previously headed the Pushkin Museum, which was now headed by Ekaterina Pronicheva, was appointed the new director of the Tretyakov Gallery. Galaktionova headed the Pushkin Museum. Pushkin since January 2025, and before that - the ROSIZO museum and exhibition center.

A source close to the Russian museum environment told The Insider that Galaktionova’s leadership of the Pushkin Museum can be called a failure:

“Galaktionova completely ruined relations with the staff of the Pushkin Museum, many key people left. But it is very convenient for both Lyubimova and the system. But the Tretyakov Gallery faces difficult times. They will continue to do exhibitions of the Itinerants and other toothless classics. There will be no contemporary art there.

Ekaterina Pronicheva successfully managed the Vladimir-Suzdal Nature Reserve, and before that she tried to make VDNKh a fashionable and modern institution. Her father from the secret services makes her his own for the authorities. For the Pushkin Museum, her appointment is a huge success. Because there are no directors. Everyone is either not suitable for ideological reasons, or is not up to such a difficult task. Literally a scorched field."

Olga Galaktionova was appointed director of the Pushkin Museum in January 2025 after the dismissal of Elizaveta Likhacheva. Likhacheva took the place of museum director in 2023 after the dismissal of Marina Loshak, who had worked in this post for 10 years. She wrote a letter of resignation just a few weeks after the dismissal of the director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Zelfira Tregulova.

According to Forbes and public comments, the ministry associated Likhacheva’s resignation with her resonant statements, including in defense of the Gulag History Museum, as well as with complaints about the management of the museum. The Kommersant publication quotes her statements immediately after taking office: “I was faced, forgive the comparison, with a moss-covered mountain of dirty dishes.” In 2024, the publication Meduza found out that Galaktionova was involved in the work of the anonymous Telegram channel “Zakulisk”, which was engaged in persecution of cultural figures disliked by the Kremlin, for example, directors Kirill Serebrennikov and Alexander Kulyabin.

Galaktionova graduated from the art history department of the Ilya Glazunov Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, then from the directing department of GITIS. Over the years she worked on television, in 2012–2015 she was an adviser to the chairman of the board of the Kudrin Foundation on supporting civil initiatives. Since 2021, she has headed the ROSIZO museum and exhibition center, which organized exhibition projects under her, including in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine.