Cultural Exchange (or not), British-Russian Style

Henri Matisse, "The Dance," 1910. State Hermitage Museum. Photo Archives Matisse, Paris. © Succession H. Matisse/DACS 2007

Russian museums, including the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, may be having second thoughts about lending their masterpieces (including Matisse's "The Dance," above) to a (possibly) upcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy, London: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870-1925 from Moscow and St. Petersburg.

But that's not stopping the flow of art in the other direction: The Hermitage is now opening a show drawn from a high-profile London collection: USA Today: New American Art from The Saatchi Gallery.

This display of recent American art gathered by London collector Charles Saatchi is billed by the St. Petersburg museum as the first installment in its planned Hermitage 20/21 project---a series of exhibitions showing major private and public collections of modern art in the sprawling General Staff Building, directly across the plaza from the Hermitage.

Meanwhile, Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage, and Irina Antonova, director of the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, have made it clear (here and here) that they derive scant comfort from the the "letter of comfort" that the British government may issue to try to relieve the Russians' fears that claimants could seize works from the Royal Academy show, due to open Jan. 26.

Controversy seems to follow Charles Saumarez Smith, who recently moved to the directorship of the Royal Academy from that of London's National Gallery.

Speaking of which, my moles tell me that the two leading candidates for the National Gallery spot vacated by Saumarez Smith are: Gabriele Finaldi, former National Gallery curator and now deputy director at the Prado, Madrid; Nicholas Penny, also a former National Gallery curator in London and now senior curator of sculpture at the National Gallery, Washington. Sometimes you've just got to leave a museum for it to fully appreciate you.

And Farah Nayeri of Bloomberg indicates that Neil MacGregor, who five years ago left the directorship of London's National Gallery for that of the British Museum, is STILL not interested in directorship of the Metropolitan Museum in New York (not that the position is open, anyway; Philippe may never want to take that last walk).