IRINA ANTONOVA: March 20 1922 – November 30, 2020
Irina Antonova, who has died of complications from COVID-19 aged 98, was director of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow for more than half a century; when she finally stepped down in 2013 she was the oldest director of any major art institution in the world and, in the words of Russia’s Culture Minister, Vladimir Medinsky, “a living legend”.
Irina Antonova was appointed director of the Pushkin in 1961 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. She had joined the museum as a curator under Stalin at the end of the Second World War. While she never met Stalin in person, only observed him across the parades in Red Square, she was still dealing with his legacy at the end of her career.
In 1945 she was present when the contents of Dresden’s Old Masters Gallery, seized by Soviet forces after Germany’s surrender, arrived in the galleries. Ten years later it was returned. She opposed the collection’s repatriation and her unwavering opposition to the restitution of artworks to Germany was to define her term. Such returns, she insisted, would not occur on her watch.
She was as eloquent in her stand as she was rigid. “The issue of trophy art is primarily one of an ethical nature,” she stated late in life. “It has to do with a moral and not so much financial compensation for Russia. One cannot simply invade a country, destroy its museums and try to stamp out the roots of its culture, as the Germans did.”
Read the obituart in The Sydney Morning Herald (from The Telegraph, London).