More on the Hermitage Theft

The mystery surrounding the death last year at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, of the curator who was in charge of the 221 items recently discovered to have been stolen from the Department of Russian Culture left the impression that she may have been a victim of foul play.

Not so, according to Alexander Shedrinsky, a former conservation professor at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts, who has close contacts with Hermitage officials and other Russian cultural figures. Shedrinsky, who now works as a liaison for international exchange programs between major American and Russian museums, said that the Hermitage curator (52 years old, not 50, as reported) had died of a stroke in her office, sitting in front of her computer.

He would not divulge her name, saying that the Hermitage is probably refusing to identify her publicly because "nobody wants to create any empty suspicions about these people." Like Shedrinsky, Peter Schaffer, an owner of A La Vielle Russie, a prominent Russian antiques gallery in New York, knew the late curator personally. Schaffer said he was told by someone "in the management of the Hermitage" that "they're absolutely convinced she had nothing to do with it."

Shedrinsky added that only four persons had access to the storage area from which the objects were taken, and "two of them are very old ladies, in their 70s....To suggest that at the end of their lives they would start to steal from their own storage is a totally ridiculous assumption."

So who did it?

The Hermitage's official statement declared, "There can be no doubt that museum employees were involved" in the theft. It also connected the theft to "today's sharply criminalized social climate, wherein people lose their moral compass." According to BBC News, the head of Russia's criminal police, Vladimir Gordyenko indicated in 2002 that "works of art were increasingly being stolen to order and that organized criminal gangs were often fulfilling orders placed by rich art lovers and dealers, often from abroad. These gangs often included former museum and library employees, or even artists."

According to the Associated Press, Mikhail Piotrovsky, the Hermitage's long-time director, told a press conference on Tuesday that the thefts are believed to have occurred over several years. Shedrinsky said that some of the objects are so large that they could not have easily been spirited away in secret. Schaffer, who speculated that some of the stolen objects may have already been put on the market, has just received a list of them in Russian, and is awaiting photographs.

In 2001, a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, "Pool in a Harem," was cut from its frame in the Hermitage and, according to a report yesterday in the London Daily Telegraph, never recovered. Piotrovsky said at the time that it was possible that the theft was an inside job.

The blogger in me senses that this is the moment to insert some snide aside about the Hermitage's security, but that would be too obvious and too merciless.