Moscow, Tret'jakov Gallery director removed: not in line with traditional values

The director of one of Russia’s most important museums, the Tret’jakov Gallery in Moscow, was ousted from her post last week: art historian Zelfira Tregulova, who has headed the Moscow museum since 2015, was in fact not renewed, and in her place was appointed Elena Proničeva, the daughter of a high-ranking military officer, Army General Vladimir Proničev, former deputy director of the FSB. The new director, born in 1983, has a bachelor’s degree in political science and previously directed the Jewish and Tolerance Museum in Moscow and the Russian capital’s Polytechnic Museum. Tregulova, on the other hand, has a degree in art history, has worked in art museums since the beginning of her career, and is an experienced professional also known internationally.

What looks like a normal turnover at the helm of one of Russia’s leading museums, however, hides a much more serious story: the probable removal of an executive not aligned with the regime. In late January, in fact, the Ministry of Culture had asked the Tret’jakov Gallery, through a formal letter, to report on the “issue of adjusting the exhibitions and permanent collection to spiritual and moral values” by preparing a response by Feb. 6 to a visitor’s complaint forwarded to the very department. The visitor, who signed his name, had in fact written to the ministry to report that in his opinion the Tret’jakov’s exhibitions do not correspond to the policy “of preserving and strengthening traditional Russian spiritual and moral values,” promoted by the Decree of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, number 809 of November 9, 2022. The decree lists “traditional values” as including “human rights,” “patriotism,” “service to the homeland,” “family,” and the “priorities of the spiritual over the material.” According to the visitor, the gallery would display works that bear the “signs of a destructive ideology” and communicate “deep pessimism” to visitors. Among the works cited by the visitor as a bad example is Aleksandr Burganov’s Pieta, a 1978 work in which the Virgin appears headless, a feature the visitor considers diabolical.

There are doubts about this letter, however. In fact, the Moscow Times reports that a museum employee, who remained anonymous, compared the pressure campaign against the museum to tactics used by the Soviet Union to get rid of disliked artists: letters, passed off as genuine and written by ordinary citizens, actually prepared by well-educated officials.

It is not known whether Tregulova has responded to the Ministry’s requests, but she has made it known that she has received no advance notice of the non-renewal of her contract, and that she learned of her removal from the media. But already in past months, the Washington Post reports, the former director had come under the crosshairs of pro-war hawks in Ukraine because of the alleged resistance put up by the Tret’jakov Gallery against the patriotic fervor of the regime’s elites. In fact, last November the gallery was supposed to host a new edition of the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, which was canceled by the Ministry of Culture officially because “the level of works is not adequate for the exhibition space.” However, according to the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, the museum’s management reportedly protested against the idea of exhibiting works of a propaganda nature created by artists from the territories of eastern Ukraine annexed by Russia against international law. Thus, with Tregulova’s removal, a space that had tried to offer a modicum of resistance to the regime risks losing its voice.

Image: a room in the Tret’jakov Gallery. Photo: Deror Avi

Moscow, Tret'jakov Gallery director removed: not in line with traditional values

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