HERMITAGE MUSEUM’S STORAGE SEARCHED BY RUSSIAN STATE SECURITY

Sophia Kishkovsky reports in the Art Newspaper that Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, has been playing down concerns about a search earlier this week of a museum facility by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

The Hermitage confirmed in a statement last Tuesday that FSB investigators were looking into “operational procedures” at the museum’s Staraya Derevnya restoration and storage center. In 2015, the Hermitage announced plans to build part of the third stage of the Staraya Derevnya complex, with the total cost of the glass cube building, designed by architect Rem Koolhaas, estimated at $1.25 million.

The FSB search comes during the ongoing controversy over a government decision to turn Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, a Saint Petersburg landmark that was converted into a museum in the Soviet era, over to the Russian Orthodox Church. Piotrovsky has been a vocal opponent of the handover, and media in Russia have speculated that the search was conducted as a warning.

Speaking at a news conference last Thursday, Piotrovsky said the agency plays a vital role in protecting the museum from dishonest construction companies. “We are in constant contact with the FSB regarding construction projects,” he told Interfax news. “They track all of our construction projects from the outset, check our documents, because there are swindlers all around, especially in the field of construction.” Piotrovsky claimed the museum is embroiled in constant lawsuits with construction companies and criticized a law that awards projects to the lowest bidder, or in his words: “the least well known and most inept” firms.