THE STATE MUSEUM OF ORIENTAL ART CELEBRATES ITS 105TH ANNIVERSARY ON OCTOBER 30. TATIANA METAKSA, ADVISOR TO THE GENERAL DIRECTOR, TOLD "KULTURA" ABOUT EXHIBITION PLANS, COLLECTION REPLENISHMENT AND MEETINGS WITH SVYATOSLAV RERIKH.
- With what mood did the Museum of Oriental Art approach this non-circular but important date?
- We began our journey through time and space in 1918, and we are still continuing it. During this time, our collection has been enriched with a large number of exhibits, many exhibitions have been shown - in the buildings where the museum was located, because it has moved several times over the years. However, since the early 1980s we have been located on Nikitsky Boulevard, in the famous Lunin House, although we have two more pavilions - at VDNKh and the North Caucasus Museum in Maikop. And also the building on Zoologicheskaya Street, where the Museum of Africa is supposed to open. It is too early to talk about the timing, there is a lot of work to be done, but it will definitely turn out to be an interesting place, a real cultural center, because we have about two thousand African exhibits.
You can imagine how many people have worked in our museum over the years! Now we have about three hundred employees, several doctors of science, many candidates, and many young people. In general, the museum is such a fabulous place where people come and stay for the rest of their lives. I myself, of course, did not think about it when I brought my employment book here, I just worked. As a result, I have been working here for 54 years and in this sense I am not alone: we have several other employees who have been working for the same long time.
- Tell us about your exhibition plans.
- We will open a large exhibition "Let All Flowers Bloom" next year: six halls of our exhibition complex will be filled with Chinese art of the 1950s. In May 2024, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Victory, we will show a small exhibition "The State Museum of Oriental Art during the Great Patriotic War". In December this year we will open a large exposition dedicated to the journey of Afanasy Nikitin. And already on November 2 - a project telling about the art of Cambodia. In addition, the exhibition "Eastern Bazaar" continues to work: bright works of artists from Central Asia, the Caucasus and Russia. If you visit it, you will not buy anything, but you will leave with a full feeling that you have been to a real oriental bazaar: you will feel the spicy smells, hear the music, the ringing of bells and silver jewelry, which are usually sold there.
In addition, the other day in my favorite town of Torzhok, a wonderful town located between Moscow and St. Petersburg, opened the exhibition "Roerich. Inspiration", where we gave works from our collections. It is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of Nikolai Konstantinovich's birth. We also provided works for the big exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery - 32 exhibits in total. I had an opportunity to visit the grand opening and I can say that a huge amount of work was done. Although when I was walking through the halls of the Tretyakov Gallery, the opening of our Roerich exhibition in October 1984 still stood before my eyes. There was a lot of people then, a real pandemonium. The great restorer Savely Yamshchikov did not even get out of the cab. I stood on the porch, he waved his hat at me and drove past.
Next year we will give exhibits for an exhibition dedicated to Roerich to the Hermitage, as well as to Barnaul and Taganrog. And in the thirteenth pavilion of VDNKh, where Roerich's work is presented, we will open the exhibition "The Worlds of Maitreya". In addition, very soon, in early November, we will open there the exhibition "Russia. Closer to the East": its geography covers the vast territory of our country from the North Caucasus to Chukotka, from the Caspian Sea to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Viewers will see more than 100 works of contemporary art from the last quarter of the 20th - early 21st century.
- You were also acquainted with Nicholas Roerich's son Svyatoslav. Tell us about these meetings.
- Svyatoslav Nikolayevich did visit our museum together with his wife, the Indian actress Devika Rani. He came until the last years of his life - he died in 1993 - and participated in conferences, discoveries and meetings. He gave the impression of a calm and gracious man. Though I am, of course, first of all an admirer of his father, Nikolai Konstantinovich, whom, unfortunately, I did not have a chance to meet: I was only two years old when he passed away in 1947 in distant India. Of course, the Roerich family and their work are very important for the museum. And an incredible role in this was played by Genrikh Pavlovich Popov, who headed the museum from 1973 to 1978, thanks to whom the museum became the owner of a wonderful collection of works by Nikolai and Svyatoslav Roerichs, as well as items from their collection.
- Tell us about the most memorable events from the museum life.
- One of the most interesting meetings occurred in the early 2000s, when the door of my office was opened and a gentleman in a white suit walked in. He said: "Hello, I am Dmitry Nikolayevich Lunin." It turned out that he was a descendant of the Decembrist Mikhail Lunin, whose uncle owned the estate where the Museum of Oriental Art is located today. Afterwards we called and corresponded with Dmitry Nikolaevich. Unfortunately, two years ago he passed away. His book "Letters from Brazil" is to be published soon. I am very much looking forward to it. He was an amazing man, and although he spent his whole life abroad - in France, Germany, Brazil - he maintained ties with the Russian community, even was the pastor of the Church of St. Martyr Zinaida in Rio de Janeiro. And, of course, he spoke Russian well - his granddaughters, unfortunately, no longer know Russian.
- I also read that you were in contact with Richard Gere.
- Yes, in October 2004, when our museum participated in an exhibition of Tibetan art at the Russian Academy of Arts. I was invited to the opening ceremony. There were very few people: Zurab Tsereteli, Richard Gere, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, gallery owner Elena Vrublevskaya. This opening was remembered to me by an anecdotal incident. I was looking at ritual objects, Gere was also studying them, even sitting down. And suddenly I felt something heavy on my head. It turned out that the TV reporters, maddened by Gere's presence, put a camera on my head. Good thing I was wearing my skullcap, as always. Anyway, I took it all in a Buddhist way calmly.
We had a few words with Gere himself when we had a private lunch later that day. He was exhibiting his photographs of Tibet. Of course, it's nice to remember these encounters. As is the fact, for example, that I walked arm in arm with Yoko Ono through the halls of our museum in 2007. She came to the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. And our museum was hosting an exhibition by Varvara Bubnova, whose sister Anna, a violinist, was married to a Japanese man, Yoko Ono's uncle. The sisters lived in Japan for a long time and taught little Yoko painting and music.
- After the fall of the Soviet Union, in the 1990s, our country experienced a surge of interest to the East, though to its vulgarized version. One can recall the mass fascination with esoteric practices. Has something changed in the perception of the East now?
- It is difficult to answer this question, because the East is big and very different. But indeed, at the very beginning of the 90s, various teachers - both real and pseudo-teachers - sprang out of the horn of plenty. Some people came to our museum: they looked into my office and told me that they had a direct connection with the space. I had to answer that I had an urgent meeting in a few minutes. However, some really interesting teachers came. There are still several Buddhist schools in Moscow. It is true that new generations are now experiencing a fascination with the East - I rarely see people my own age, whom we used to meet at retreats near Moscow.
- Is there room for jealousy in museum life? The theater, for example, is called by evil tongues a serpentarium of like-minded people.
- My closest friend was an actress at the Sovremennik for a long time, and one of my friends was an actor at the MKhAT, so I know a little about theater. There, the passions are stronger: more reasons for ambitions to clash. With us, things are softer. There are, for example, several specialists on China, but one deals with painting, another with arts and crafts, and a third with porcelain. Each one specializes in his own. This doesn't mean we live in paradise - the relationships between people are different. But there's no such thing as a serpentarium. I think a museum is a brighter place.
- Recent years have not been easy, including for museums. What challenges has the Museum of Oriental Art had to face?
- It is with sadness and pain that I can say that several important staff members have left us in the last five years. Zhenya Karlova, our favorite Indologist, passed away, she was only 40 years old. She left us suddenly, I remember this day - September 15, 2020. Olga Rumyantseva died - she worked in the museum for a long time, was the head of the Roerich cabinet and did a lot to popularize the work of the great artistic dynasty. Volodya Voitov, our chronicler, died, who for many years worked as the chief curator and then wrote the history of our museum, published in the three-volume book "Materials on the History of the State Museum of Oriental Art. 1918-1990." There is no more the marvelous Natasha Kanevskaya, our Japanologist, who came to the museum even before me: I will never forget how we opened the exhibition in Yokohama. Covid took the life of Nafiset Kushu, who headed our department in Maikop for many years.
And yet the museum was able to overcome the difficulties, including those caused by the pandemic. Over the past five years, we have conducted seven thousand offline excursions and delivered five hundred lectures - a huge effort by the Excursion and Lecture Department. The department of excursion and lecture work is a huge effort of the museum's branch in Maikop, which is now headed by Aminat Soobtsokova. Our archeologists work "in the fields": within the framework of the Caucasian and Chukotka archeological expeditions of the Museum of Oriental Art. The third project - the South-Priaral complex archaeological expedition - is organized jointly with Uzbekistan.
We continue to expand our collection in various ways. We were especially helped by Olga Michi, a well-known photographer, who donated three hundred items: objects from Africa, Myanmar, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. As well as collector Alexander Emelyanov, who donated about one hundred items of jewelry art of Afghanistan.
- In recent years there have been many debates about the function of a museum. The main question is whether it should teach or entertain. It is not without reason that the term "blockbuster exhibitions" has appeared.
- We try to make it interesting for people of all ages from young to old. It is not for nothing that we are called the Museum of the East: the first association with the word "East" is wisdom. Therefore, in a certain sense, we fill people with knowledge, promote the birth and deepening of interest in the vast ocean called the East.
Photos: Ekaterina Chesnokova / RIA Novosti. The announcement shows Ivan Kazakov's painting "The Ruins of Bibi-Khanim" - photo provided by the press service of the Museum of Oriental Art
