Mikhail Piotrovsky’s Rules for Life

There are just two questions you can’t ask me: why I wear a scarf and what my favourite painting is.

The Hermitage is a skete [a small isolated monastery]. For the majority of people, it is somewhere to withdraw to, somewhere to take refuge.

We are very ceremonious. Our exhibitions have an imperial bent, not because we are so conceited. We are simply obliged to keep it up: the tsar is gone, but many traditions remain. There is the tsar-house and we are not exactly its servants, but we help to disseminate the spirit of the house. The Hermitage is a palace that remembers itself in an amazing way. And everything around should be determined by the palace, its style and taste.

Culture and politics are interconnected. Only culture is above politics. When everything in politics collapses, culture remains the bridge between people that is the last to be blown up.

Without the exhibition in Versailles, there would not have been a meeting between Putin and Macron, The new French President would not have held a meeting without some occasion. Art that unites peoples always performs a diplomatic function. Crises have been overcome with the aid of art. Let’s remember the Soviet era: first they sent an exhibition, then relations were restored.
When it became clear that ancient Palmyra no longer exists, I felt anger. It is patently obvious that the monuments and treasures could have been protected.

Any Middle Eastern war resembles a crusade. There’s a well-known story that during one Russo-Turkish war Catherine I collected together all her jewellery and bribed the Turks, they opened a corridor and the Russians slipped out of the encirclement. One can only wage war for monuments and defend them.

The museum will never become entirely virtual. Now, even without that, there are plenty of circus tents of all sorts showing all of Van Gogh’s paintings in one go. There’s nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that you can’t call that kind of format a museum, where you have the energy of the real thing.

People tell us, “Well done for turning your attention to contemporary art!” But there is nothing new about that. The Emperors and Empresses bought the art of their own day. And the first exhibition of contemporary art took place in Petrograd in 1918 in the Winter Palace. So, can we today really keep aside from it?

We should not only please our visitors, but also acquaint them with something new. When we placed Fabre’s skulls and stuffed animals in the Snyders hall, people also started to pay attention to Snyders, although they usually go quickly past.
There was no great influx in connection with the Fabre exhibition. There were slightly more visitors, but it was nothing in comparison with Serov or Aivazovsky, when the numbers visiting the Tretyakov Gallery increased several times over. The aim was to get people to see Fabre who would never have gone specially to see him.

Trust is not democracy. It is a sign of strength.
In difficult conditions, as we know, poets write good verse, artists paint good pictures, but when there is complete freedom then nothing happens at all.

I fully accept the existing regime. I would prefer not to adopt any positions at all, but sometimes it has to be done to help. For me standing for the State Duma in 2011 was roughly the same as writing that letter to the Patriarch about St Isaac’s Cathedral. There are situations when you have to step forward and speak out.
It would be far worse if no-one was interested in your opinion.

Many processes that are taking place in society and in the world today can be explained by a single phrase: “Back in the USSR”. The title of that Beatles song fits perfectly. Especially as it parodies Chuck Berry’s “Back in the USA”. While we here in Petersburg try to live like in the Simon and Garfunkel song – as a “Bridge over Troubled Water”.

Petersburg needs to be loved at the very least in order for it not to sink. It is very easily destroyed. The city is built on a marsh; there are prophecies about the city; people hate the city. It could disappear under water at any moment.
I have a rich and varied life. I live in many worlds and I continue to be an orientalist. I have no time to regret that something went wrong. Variety produces ideality.
The museum is a powerful tool for purification.

Text: Sergei Yakovlev
https://esquire.ru/wil/piotrovsky