COLUMNISTS

Thousands of items have apparently gone missing from state-run museums and galleries, the authorities recently announced. Is it time to consider privatizing some of Russia's great museums?

The grave situation with Russia's state-run museums and their storage facilities went public two years ago, when a large theft from the country's main museum, the Hermitage, was discovered. Not much was done about that particular case, and the blame was put on underpaid low-level employees who allegedly lifted some lower-shelf items just to make ends meet.

However, as it turned out, the Hermitage case triggered a large-scale inspection of all of the country's state-run museums. The preliminary results were recently announced and came as a shock to anybody who cares about Russian culture: some 50,000 items belonging to the country's museums are unaccounted for.

Officials who announced the figure - which is not a final one, as only 80 percent of the job has allegedly been completed - downplayed the situation, saying that some of the missing items may not be actually stolen, but could be misplaced or not properly registered after moving to new premises. Still, common logic would push anyone to the dreadful conclusion that if more than one hundred items of rare art were stolen from St. Peters­burg's renowned  Hermitage, then the situation in the underfinanced provincial museums, not to mention with their underpaid staff, is probably much worse.

Interestingly, Russian art exists as if in two parallel worlds that rarely come together. One world is that of the art market, where million of dollars are spent on various  objects (with the artistic value of some pieces being debatable). The other world is that of provincial art museums, some of which are still kept in decent condition, while others are on the verge of collapse.

In a situation when the government is unwilling to spend cash on culture (unlike in the 1990s, today it has more than enough of it), an obvious solution would be the privatization of some museums, which would, in a way, bring the two disparate worlds together. Of course, we are not talking about the country's landmark museums and galleries - such as the Hermitage or the Tretyakov Gallery - the control of which the government would never release.

But the country has hundreds, if not thousands, of small, provincial museums that could be easily put on the block. An obvious concern is that if some museums were privatized, the buyer would re-sell all of the most valuable items with a good profit and then routinely maintain the remaining collection of much lesser value just to comply with the requirements of the deal. Otherwise, why would anyone be interested in buying, for example, a gallery in a small town that would never turn in a profit?

Unlike in Moscow and St. Peters­burg, small-town galleries wouldn't be able to offer first-rate objects for show, and at the same time, people wouldn't be able to pay that much in entrance fees. Situations like turning a gallery into a shopping center or tearing it down entirely to build something more profitable on valuable land, hopefully, wouldn't be possible, if everything is done properly on the legal side. So, there is not much that could make a state-run museum attractive for a prospective buyer.

Still it seems like there is no way out besides putting smaller museums and galleries on sale, while stipulating the new owner's rights and obligation as clearly as possible. When presented with the two options - losing a museum's collection under the present situation,  or possibly preserving at least part of it for the future by transferring it into private hands - why not go for the latter option?

By Vladimir Kozlov