Irina Antonova, head of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, turns 90 on Tuesday, Voice of Russia reports. A prominent fine art expert, Antonova has added greatly to the popularization of modern-day Western art among Soviet people.
Antonova has been director of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow since 1961, making her the oldest director of a major art museum in the world. Among her many awards and decorations are the State Prize of the Russian Federation and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Antonova studied under Boris Vipper at the Moscow University, graduating in 1945. Later that year she joined the staff of the Pushkin Museum, where she has worked ever since.
“It was August 1945”, she told the Art Newspaper. “The works of art confiscated from the Dresden museums were arriving as war reparations. I was there with my museum colleagues and some young soldiers, lucky ones who had come back from the front intact. We opened crate number 100, and there she was, Raphael’s Sistine Madonna.”
Antonova witnessed as the entire collection of the Dresden Gallery arrived to the museum from Germany in 1945 and was removed from it ten years later. She opposed the return of the collection to Germany, claiming it was a just compensation for the damage inflicted on Russia's cultural heritage by the German invaders. The museum still holds Priam's Treasure, looted by the Red Army after the Battle of Berlin.
Antonova's interests revolve around Impressionist and Modern art. In 1948, the Pushkin Museum acquired considerable holdings of these works from the nationalized collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov. Antonova was also instrumental in establishing Svyatoslav Richter's December nights, an international music festival that has been held in the museum since 1981.
Antonova has proven herself a good lobbyist for the museum, recently attaining government approval for a $650 million modernization and expansion plan designed by Foster and Partners, the Art Newspaper reports. Opening soon in her honor is a celebratory exhibition to which some of the most important institutions of the world will be lending, on the theme of Andr
