Finnish customs detained three shipments of art headed home to Russia through Finland from elsewhere in Europe and Japan in early April. (photo courtesy of Finnish customs)
Finland’s seizure of a treasure trove of art headed back to Russia from exhibitions in Europe and Japan has drawn attention to international art loans as the West imposes wide-ranging economic sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. The ensuing dispute over three shipments of paintings and sculptures, valued at US$46 million, held at the Vaalimaa border crossing between Finland and Russia in early April, has since been resolved, but the last two months have seen other tit-for-tat actions on the cultural front.
Poster from the recent Korean exhibition "Kandinsky, Malevich and the Russian Avant-Garde: Revolutionary Art."
A Moscow exhibition on the history of duels was cancelled after 10 European institutions announced they would not loan their works to Russia. In Seoul, the Sejong Centre for the Performance Arts refused a Russian request to immediately return more than 60 works borrowed from four different Russian museums, saying it would wait until the show’s scheduled closure, as stipulated in its contracts. And Arts Council England has advised cultural institutions to immediately cancel any upcoming loans of art or artifacts from state-sponsored or state-funded collections in Russia and Belarus, and, where necessary, to cancel or revise their exhibitions.
In Canada, there has been no news of exhibition loans to or from Russia or Belarus, which is supporting Russia’s military efforts. But the Canada Council for the Arts has advised of an immediate hold on certain activities, including tours, festivals and co-productions, “to ensure that public funds from Canada are not used to contribute to the Russian or Belarusian economy, thereby prolonging the invasion of Ukraine.”
According to Finland’s customs service, Tulli, the European Union’s sanctions document contains a paragraph on art. This would put cultural institutions in a complex position. On one hand, they need to comply with the sanctions while, on the other, they must respect their legal agreements to return works loaned prior to the invasion to Russian institutions.
In France, for instance, there were calls to seize works from the Morozov collection, including paintings by Manet, Gauguin and Matisse, that were being exhibited at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. The blockbuster show was part of the Trianon Dialogue, an initiative to strengthen ties between French and Russian civil society, notably through cultural cooperation, an endeavour launched in 2017 by French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Olivier de Baecque, a lawyer who specializes in art, says a French law – arrêté d’insaisissabilité or order of non-seizability – in force since 1994, means France cannot sequester the art because it is the responsibility of foreign public institutions.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris exhibited works from the Morozov collection that needed to return to Russia. (courtesy FLV, photo by Iwan Baan)
On April 8, a week after the shipments were detained, Finland announced it would release the work saying “exceptions for cultural artifacts in the European Union sanction rules will become effective on April 9, after which the foreign ministry will grant customs officials permission to release the art works.”
Immunity from legal repercussions
A Kazimir Malevich painting from 1915-16, "Suprematist Composition (with Yellow, Orange and Green Rectangle)" from the collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. (A7675; courtesy Wiki Commons)
How does an institution decide whether to send priceless works of art far from the secure domain of its own collection for exhibition in another country? On the face of it, such decisions are based on trust. Questions arise, however, about how to sustain that trust, and also how to spare borrowing institutions the hassles of dealing with a seizure or legal action.
A case in point is a 2005 American legal case, Malewicz v. City of Amsterdam. The Stedeljik Museum, a municipal institution of the City of Amsterdam, had loaned about 100 works to two museums in the United States. However, heirs of the Russian artist Kazimir Malewicz – the pioneer in geometric abstraction also known as Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) – made a legal claim on 14 works, saying the museum had acquired them illegally.
The City of Amsterdam invoked American legislation, specifically the Immunity from Seizure Act of 1965, which recognizes the need to encourage cultural and intellectual exchange through international art loans. But the court ruling underlined that immunity only protects works from seizure, and not from those seeking damages, allowing a lawsuit to go ahead to determine ownership. The fallout from that decision was growing international reluctance to loan works to American art museums.
Another dispute arose between Russia and members of Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic group based in Brooklyn, about thousands of religious books and manuscripts in Moscow’s possession. Chabad had failed in the Russian courts to secure the Schneerson collection, seized by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution, and tried again in American court. This time they won, although the Russians refused to return the work. The 2011 ruling legitimized Russian fears that art lent to American institutions might be seized. Consequently, multiple A-list American museums had to cancel or postpone shows. They reciprocated in kind, denying art exchanges to Russian institutions.
In 2016, President Barrack Obama signed federal legislation aimed at clearing the murky legal waters to offer confidence to Russian institutions. The Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act thawed relations, but by then a stalemate had been induced by the unstable geopolitical situation following the Maidan putsch, which saw the departure of Ukraine’s then-president, Viktor Yanukovych, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, both in 2014.
Museum professionals have engaged in intellectual and diplomatic endeavours to end the impasse. Exasperated by the lack of progress, they thought one way forward might be a public conversation. So, in 2019, Glenn Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, broke the ice with Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg, at the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The exchange saw them agree that a solution to the impasse was needed.
Winnipeg’s groundbreaking moment
Against this backdrop, pioneering work has been undertaken in Canada. In 1976, an unlikely cultural institution – the Winnipeg Art Gallery – found itself in uncharted territory when a Soviet travelling exhibition to the United States, Master Paintings from the Hermitage and the State Russian Museum, Leningrad, was offered to Canada. It featured 42 masterpieces – including works by Rembrandt, Titian and Rubens – that had never been seen in Canada. It was the first time Western paintings from the Soviet Union had been loaned to American institutions.
Armand Hammer, a wealthy American art patron, dubbed “Lenin’s chosen capitalist” by the media, had engineered the deal to exhibit the works, valued at some $35 million, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and institutions in four other American cities. In exchange, there would be a reciprocal loan of works from the National Gallery, Hammer’s personal collection, and the other participating institutions. Leonid Brezhnev, then the general secretary of the governing Communist Party of the Soviet Union, noted in a letter accompanying the catalogue that the exchange marked the 30th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, when the Soviet and American peoples had “fought against a common enemy.”
Nina Birukova, a curator at the Hermitage museum (right), Ann Davis, a curator at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (centre)
and the wife of the USSR ambassador to Canada (left) at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1976. (photo by Ernest Mayer, courtesy Ann Davis)
Winnipeg and Montreal were chosen as host cities. But there was a catch. The Soviets demanded immunity from any third party that might make a legal demand on works in the show. Worried that descendants of families that may have owned some of the paintings could sue for their return, the Soviets pointed to American legislation, the 1965 Immunity from Seizure Act, as a model.
Ann Davis, then a curator at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, remembers that time well.
“As background, it is important to remember that the Soviets considered Winnipeg to be the hotbed of Ukrainian dissent,” she said in a recent email conversation.
The gallery wanted to make sure the city’s various Ukrainian communities were enthusiastic about the show, and worked with their leaders, keeping them briefed on developments. Davis says Manitoban politicians initially did not seem especially concerned about the need to pass legislation to ensure works in the show would have immunity from seizure.
“They appeared not to have heard negatively from Manitoban Ukrainians, and they did seem to understand that hosting this exhibition would be a considerable coup,” she says.
“... the Soviets considered Winnipeg to be the hotbed of Ukrainian dissent.”
“As we had been given the specific contents of the exhibition, I spent a considerable amount of time researching the works to make sure that none might be liable for seizure. While that research was not especially easy – this was before the Internet – the paintings were so famous that I was able to conclude with considerable certainty that the provenance of each was very secure.”
She notes that immunity from seizure revolves around more than whether art was acquired illegally – it can also relate to politics.
“The Soviets were not at all sure about Winnipeg. I think they thought Manitobans were unsophisticated hooligans from the Wild West. The Hermitage curator who came over with the shipment had been briefed before departure. She was afraid to walk alone on the streets of Winnipeg. Just after her arrival, she glued herself to me, following me like a two-year-old, even once, to my surprise, into the washroom.”
An article published in the Winnipeg Tribune on Aug. 13, 1976.
A Maclean’s article at the time said the Soviet demand had ruffled the feathers of Manitoba’s Ukrainian Canadian Committee and the Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations, an international organization that acted as a co-ordinating centre for anti-communist and nationalist émigré groups. As well, civil libertarians outside Manitoba feared such a law would deny Canadians due process in their own courts. The article, by Barry Hale, was headlined “From Russia with reluctance – not to mention some bizarre politics.”
Davis says she made similar arguments to both the province’s Ukrainian communities and its politicians. “The exhibition was absolutely first class, composed of many of the great Western artists, represented by some of their best work. Nothing like it had ever been seen in Winnipeg. We should be honoured to have it. On the question of immunity, I argued that, as far as I could tell, none of the pieces was vulnerable to question as to rightful ownership. However, for security, the Soviets demanded immunity from seizure legislation: we would not get the show otherwise.”
Davis, who remembers the episode as “a heady experience,” says she faced catcalls when she argued for the legislation in front of the provincial law reform committee. The Manitoba legislature, after a month of acrimonious debate, passed the legislation by a vote of 35-14. In contrast, the Quebec legislature, where Liberal leader Robert Bourassa had a large majority, pushed the legislation through in four hours. In Ontario, the minority government led by former Conservative premier William Davis side-stepped any political fallout. Davis called the possibility of immunity legislation “abhorrent.”
News reports from the time indicate the Winnipeg exhibition saw some 90,000 visitors without any untoward incidents. And, by 1985, three other provinces – Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta – had followed suit with similar legislation. Canada is among only a few countries with these legal protections, which have never been tested by the Canadian legal system.
The fate of the Morozov collection
When we are bombarded by images and narratives about the human ravages of war, we tend to forget art collectors and their singular work to build collections. Russian art historian Natalya Semenova has written on the lives of private art collectors in Russia, authoring definitive biographies of the Morozov brothers – Morozov: The Story of a Family and a Lost Collection – and Sergei Shchukin –The Collector: The Story of Sergei Shchukin and His Lost Masterpieces.
With the recent news reports about art seizures, I wonder about the fate of Morozov collection, amassed by Mikhail (1870-1903) and Ivan (1871-1921), who had a friendly rivalry with Shchukin. Will the unstable geopolitical situation and the growing isolation of Russia leave the Morozov collection again shuttered from international gaze, as it was in the Soviet Union’s early days after the collection was nationalized and broken apart? ■
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