Artwork historian Zelfira Tregulova, who led the state Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow since 2015, has been pressured out of her job. Tregulova informed Russia’s Nationwide State Information that the Russian Ministry of Tradition blindsided her early this month with a requirement that she reply by February 6 to a grievance dropped at the ministry by a museum customer named Sergei Shadrin. Shadrin accused the Tretyakov Gallery of failing to hew to the “conventional Russian religious and ethical values” espoused in a decree set forth by Putin this previous November. Talked about among the many values are “human rights,” “patriotism,” “service to the Fatherland,” “household,” “justice,” and “historic reminiscence.” Shadrin cited “indicators of a damaging ideology” as current within the gallery’s show, and additional stated that he left the museum with a way of vacancy and hopelessness.
Tregulova has publicly expressed unfavorable views relating to Russian officers’ rhetoric surrounding the nation’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine in February 2022. It isn’t identified whether or not she responded to the demand earlier than the ministry made the choice to not renew her contract. Tregulova informed the Nationwide State Information that she discovered of her ousting by way of the media. Getting into her freshly vacated function is Elena Pronicheva, the daughter of Federal Safety Service Normal Vladimir Pronichev, a high-ranking navy official within the Putin administration. Tregulova is named one of many world’s most educated museum professionals; Pronicheva has little expertise within the subject of artwork, having since 2020 served as director of Moscow’s Polytechnic Museum, and earlier than that, as govt director of the town’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Middle.
Based in 1856, the Tretyakov Gallery is taken into account one in every of Russia’s most vital museums. The Ninth Moscow Artwork Biennale, which had been to open there this previous November, was canceled by authorities officers days earlier than its launch, stoking censorship fears. Following Tregulova’s elimination, an unnamed Tretyakov staffer informed the Moscow Instances, “We’re coping with a typical Soviet manner of coping with objectionable artwork, allegedly by a letter from the folks, which is given as an official motive.”