U.S. sees results from resumed cultural exchange

Press, 28 July 1986, Page 35

U.S. sees results from resumed cultural exchange

NZPA-Reuter Washington

When the United States President, Ronald Reagan, and the Kremlin leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, agreed to resume United States-Soviet cultural ties during their Geneva summit conference meeting last November, the museum world jumped Into action. Within minutes of the announcement, Washington's National Gallery of Art fired off telexes to the Soviet Ministry of Culture, the Pushkin Institute in Moscow and the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad asking for the loan of 40 paintings.

Seven months later — fast moving in the art world — a stunning display of Soviet-owned works is touring the United States, drawing capacity crowds and rave reviews.

Titled “Impressionism to Early Modern Paintings from the U.5.5.R.,” with a blazing red canvas by Matisse as an opening and a crimson-shaded one by Picasso as the finale, the show has been seen in

Washington, is now in Los Angeles and will move later to New York’s Metropolitan Museum. “We had to move fast,” said the deputy director of the National Gallery, John Wilmerding.

’There are windows of opportunity in dealing with the Soviets. We didn’t know when there would be another Afghanistan or something else that would sour relations,” he said.

Washington had suspended cultural exchanges with Moscow after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979.

The exhibition which, marks the end of that estrangement includes 41 works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Cezanne, Monet and Renoir and reflects weeks of frenzied negotiation.

The cultural break had . left United States art experts frustrated. “We could only look and ogle at what was going on in terms of Russian,dnstitutions lending to other museums in

Europe,” said a National Gallery curator, Christopher With. A gallery’s director was envious of a selection of Impressionist paintings lent for private showing in Switzerland in 1983. He tried to dodge the exchange ban by having the works brought to America under private aegis. “Our Russian colleagues were amenable, but diplomatically it was shot down,” he said.

After the Geneva summit conference museum curators tried again for the same Impressionist collection shown in Switzerland. This time, the staff of the Pushkin and Hermitage Museums raised problems.

The reply was summarised as: "Why do you always ask for the same old things? These pictures . . . need a rest.”

An industrialist, Mr Armand Hammer, took part in the negotiations and offered to loan the Russians 100 works from his own collection to facilitate the exchange.

Mr Hammer «jhas become something of an

unofficial liaison man between the United States and the Soviet Union after more than 60 years of personal efforts to pro-

mote good relations. Now a billionaire businessman with a wide range of powerful contacts in both countries, he has often acted as a gobetween since 1921 when he first went to Moscow to collect debts the new Bolshevik State owed his family's pharmaceutical firm. United States officials say he played a key role in the art swap. In, return for the loan, 40 Impressionist and postimpressionist works from the National Gallery were sent to the Soviet Union in February and were on view at the Hermitage and Pushkin museums. People queued for hours in freezing weather to see them.

Mr Hammer’s paintings are on loan to Moscow for a year. The final selection of paintings sent to the United States included only seven seen in the. United States before. L

The paintings were acquired in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by two Russian businessmen.

Two textile merchants, Ivan Abramovich Morozov and Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin, travelled regularly to Paris for fashion and trade fairs and also to indulge their passion for ait Christopher With said that without the support of Shchukin and Morozov it was doubtful that Matisse and Picasso would have had the money to continue their work. Shchukin brought Matisse to Moscow in 1911 to install 21 of his paintings in a grand salon. “Modern Russian artists saw Matisse’s pictures in Shchukin’s home for the first time,” said Mr With. After the revolution the

paintings became State property and eventually ended up in the Pushkin and Hermitage. Morozov died in 1821. Shchukin lived until 1937 in exile on the French Riviera. T