A cruel surprise awaits travelers who come to the “miners’ capital” with the purpose to learn about Donetsk’s cultural potential: the city of almost a million people has all in all a mere two museums, a local history museum and a museum of arts. Besides, the latter has been “lodging” in adjusted premises, which have repeatedly been flooded by the lodgers living above, fortunately only by hot water from broken heating pipes. However, in spite of the disadvantageous placement of exposition areas, absolutely disastrous lighting, and small number of works by widely known, classic artists, the collection produces an impression of unity, i.e., “the collective mind” of the displayed works of painting, graphics, sculpture, stained-glass, and works executed in mixed modern artistic techniques leaves one with a feeling of something classy and accomplished. Halyna CHUMAK, the many-year head of the Donetsk Museum of Arts, speaks about this provincial phenomenon and other things.
Ms. Chumak, interestingly, the establishment you head has two birthdates.
“The museum’s biography is an integral part of what has been taking place in the Donbas. In the late 1930s the power of industrialization was let loose and the Stakhanov movement was popularized. Catching on to the trend, the artist Joseph Brodsky offered to establish a picture gallery ‘Stalino’ in the oblast’s center, where portraits of the nation’s leaders were on display, among other works.
“In a short while several packages with paintings came to the city, but nobody was in a hurry to take them from the railway station’s luggage department. The administration of the station had to appeal to the authorities with the threat to sell the pictures at an auction or simply throw away the ‘junk.’ Only then did they start looking for premises to place the miracles for the proletarian city.
“The ‘Stalino’ picture gallery was officially launched in the autumn of 1939. We still preserve a ticket to the city’s movie theater ‘Zhovten’ that enabled a visitor to see the art exposition. Incidentally, the authors of the works were known in the country, even if they were not quite famous: Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Martiros Saryan, Alexander Deyneka, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Nikolai Kuznetsov, Konstantin Bogaevsky, Alexander Gerasimov.
“But as we know, World War II broke out soon after that. Everyone forgot about the pictures in the chaos of evacuation. The Germans who entered the city carefully selected the 256 most precious works out of 400 and brought them to the Reich. At the moment that first collection is de facto considered to be lost. Only nine paintings suddenly emerged in Kyiv in the 1990s with their condition being far from good and requiring capital restoration.”
Later the “miners’ capital” did not have a picture gallery for 20 years.
“There was a small art department in the oblast museum of local history. When in 1965 the idea of reviving the Donetsk Museum of Arts emerged, the number-one problem was where to place it. An apartment building had just been erected in the city, and its first floor was supposed to be taken by a large grocery store like Yeliseyevsky: all Muscovite things were fashionable at the time. But the grocery store was given up.
“The works for the new collection were gathered in the Hermitage, Pushkin Museum of Pictorial Arts, Tretyakov Gallery, as well as galleries in Minsk, Simferopol, and Sevastopol. The owners gave away those pictures that had been gathering dust, without a chance to be included in the main exposition.”
So the Donetsk museum’s second life was marked by a certain inferiority.
“Let’s distinguish between the second echelon and banal second-rate things. We cannot ignore that Vladimir Benediktov and Yevgeny Baratynsky are a part of Russian poetry just because of Pushkin’s fame. The same applies to pictorial arts. Moreover, the division between ‘geniuses and simply talented’ in art is always conditional and temporary. For example, the works by Jacopo Amigoni, George Dawe and August Riedel, present in our museum collection are far less known than those of their ‘well-promoted’ predecessor Rembrandt, yet they enjoy a stable circle of admirers. And the value of their oeuvre is gradually rising. Will anyone dare ascribe to the ‘rearguard’ Ivan Aivazovsky, Konstantin Makovsky, Konstantin Korovin, or for example founder of futurism David Burliuk?
“Another source that raises the artistic value of the museum collection is the scholarly activity aimed at identifying works that have not been studied yet. In our time we received many pictures that were described in the cover documentation like ‘A portrait of unknown man by an unknown artist.’ I will tell you one story. It took scholarly associate Tetiana Panova several years of exhausting work to study a picture depicting an old room decorated with a vast number of pictures. After all it turned out that it showed the picture gallery of Vasily Kokorev, founder of the first public museum in Moscow, and the work’s author was a well known artist Aleksandr Grebnev. The administration of the Tretyakov Gallery can just kick itself for once giving away such a treasure. Now it is an inseparable part of our collection.
“To the aforementioned I would add that for many years the museum has been looking for and buying (sometimes even begging the authors or their heirs) interesting works for our collection. Now connoisseurs compare it to Ukraine’s best collections.”
Another obvious social task of the museum is to preserve the oeuvre of the Donetsk artistic community. Here it would be proper to tell the tragic story of Hennadii Olempiiuk. Because of an accident the talented Donetsk artist died, thought many said a great future awaited him. His oeuvre was scattered and as a result his name is very quickly moving into oblivion.
“I can right away add another tragic name which was underestimated: Mykola Dubina. By the way, our exposition includes the works of both artists.
“In an answer to your question I would say: the museum is doing all it is able to. Several times a year we offer exhibit areas for Donetsk artists, collective or private exhibits. Then we buy at least one work. Many Donetsk artists eagerly give the museum their pictures as presents, like the People’s Artist of Ukraine Yurii Zorko. Right now we are hosting an exhibit of another recognized Donetsk master, Hrihorii Tyshkevych.”
The museum is limited to its own collection, and has gone through financial difficulties. Yet it recently saw a stroke of luck: you exhibited the paintings of Ivan Marchuk, as well as the “miracles on wheels” by the trendy sculptor Oleh Pinchuk.
“You know, it was quite an unexpected organization. The International Association of Greek Entrepreneurs offered to bring Marchuk’s works to Donetsk. We called Marchuk just in case, who was surprised by this proposal, but when the people call…
“Pinchuk’s sculpture exhibit was funded by the famous Donetsk businessmen, brothers Andrii and Serhii Kliuiev. They also bought one of his works, and now it is on display in one of our halls. We frequently have to rely on luck. For example, I did not believe that we will succeed in bringing to Donetsk the exhibit of Japanese Applied Arts, on its way from Latin America to the Hermitage, but we managed.”
However, the famous Scythian pectoral brought from the National Museum of Historical Treasures turned out to be a mere copy.
“This is a matter of principle, I will tell you. Do you think that Tutankhamun’s golden mask, displayed all over the world from time to time, for big money, is an authentic artifact? No country in the world would risk such a priceless thing. If the copy is certified and artistically perfect, it performs the required aesthetic task.”
In recent dark times many Ukrainian museums lost their prize possessions, for some or other reason. What is the situation in the Donetsk museum?
“The collection has been preserved completely, which can be checked with the help of catalogs published in Soviet times. I can recall only one incident, when a small work was stolen from the private collection from which it was brought to Aivazovsky’s exhibit, but this happened long ago.
“Using the occasion, I want to complain. Recently we have received a strict instruction from the capital that the agreements on guarding the museum should be concluded based on an auction. Yet the law says that only the State Guarding Agency can take care of the museum. Why create such bureaucratic entrapments for the heads of cultural establishments? We are already more bureaucrats than scholars.”
Once I was lucky to see your reserves. They contain many works of the socialist realism period, when artists were brought in brigades to the Komsomol high-powered new buildings, and then made museums buy their work. Until recently it has been disregarded, but times have changed: social realism is fashionable now.
“We have partially had an occasion to display such works at exhibits dedicated to another anniversary of Stakhanov’s record, which is still widely celebrated across the Donbas. We want to create a separate large exposition, but under current circumstances we are staying in the old premises, and it is possible to realize this idea only if we reduce the classical, stable exposition. As the museum’s head I will never do this. Therefore we have to wait for a better time.”
Let us speak about the most important thing in our today’s conversation, the prospect of moving to a new building.
“Not so long ago Donetsk’s city authorities announced that they plan to build a new complex for the museum of arts, next to the Donbas Arena. They have even allotted a land plot for this. However, experts say that the soil is not reliable there, it may shrink, which may cause cracks on the walls, but if one does one’s best while building, there will be no complications. Another question is that the river Kalmius is located nearby. But I have for example shots of two art galleries in China and Brazil located in the middle of artificial lakes, and it’s okay. Let’s recall Saint Petersburg’s Hermitage (in its time it was supposed to be a tsar’s palace, not a picture gallery).
“I have asked the city’s mayor Oleksandr Lukianchenko about the transport connection. At the moment the museum is located in barely usable premises, albeit in the city’s heart, on the crossroads of two quiet boulevards. For example, schoolchildren after covering a two-hour way from a small miners’ village in order to enjoy beautiful things, can rest in the tree shades before getting on the bus for their way back. And what will the situation be like at the new place? The mayor promised that it would be no less comfortable. He said that a new city center will emerge near the stadium as the time passes.
“Meanwhile, the initial projects of the museum’s new building have been posted online for public discussion. I don’t understand how can one resolve specific questions on keeping to sanitary norms of preserving rarities: lighting, ventilation, dividing the streams of tourists, and security via Internet voting? Of all the project authors only one architect, the youngest one, asked me for corresponding regulations (and I remembered him). The final decision will be brought in by a commission where my word weighs enough, so we will have a discussion there.
“The Donetsk community could have a say in supporting the idea of a synthetic, complex art center in the new museum. I would like to have an operating movie theater that would show educational films on art, as well as a hall for chamber concerts, artists’ studios open for visitors, restoration studios. After all, the word ‘museum’ used to mean a ‘place chosen by Muses.’”
