Word: antonova
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...situation was further complicated when Moscow's Pushkin Museum beat the Hermitage to the punch by setting up in February a hastier and less focused show of Impressionist paintings, together with some older ones by Goya, El Greco and others. Its director, Irina Antonova, a cultural bureaucrat in the traditional Soviet style, made no suggestion that these works were going anywhere after the show-least of all to Germany. "Soviet troops saved these artworks, while the fascists wrecked ours," she declared at a press conference. "We deserve some form of compensation...
...Trophy art" is a preposterous euphemism, suggesting the stuff was awarded to the victors in some noble contest involving shields and javelins. But for full-blown hypocrisy, it would be hard to outdo director Antonova's title for the Pushkin show: "Twice Saved"--as though its pictures had undergone some religious conversion by being dragged off to Mother Russia, "saved" by conservators after being "saved" previously by the Red Army in what she called "an act of heroism." Maybe some of these objects would have been burned to ashes or blown to pieces if they had remained in Germany...
| 1 |