You can be proud of the life that you are satisfied with and that others talk about with admiration… Irina Antonova, former director of the Pushkin Museum, has every right to be respected by other people for her work in this difficult post.
Short biography of Irina Antonova
Irina Alexandrovna was born on 1922-20-03 in Moscow, in a family of great art lovers. Although her father, Alexander Alexandrovich, a former revolutionary, was only an electrician, his love for the theater turned out to be passionate and passed on to his daughter. From her mother Ida Mikhailovna, a piano musician, she inherited a love of music. My father had an attraction not only to the theater (he even took part in amateur productions), but also to glass production, which became his real vocation.
Thanks to the new profession of her father, Irina Antonova with her parents from 1929 to 1933. lived in Germany, where she learned German enough to read German classics in the original. After the Nazis came to power, the Antonov family returned to the Soviet Union.
After graduating from school, Irina entered the Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature in Moscow, whichclosed when the war started. Irina Alexandrovna graduated from nursing courses and worked in the hospital throughout the war.
After the war, Irina Antonova graduated from this institute within the framework of Moscow State University, to which he was transferred, and began to work and study at the same time at the Pushkin Museum, which at that time was a graduate school. Antonova specializes in Italian Renaissance art.
In 1961, as a senior researcher at the museum, she was appointed director of the museum for over 40 years.
Spouse - Yevsey Iosifovich Rotenberg (1920-2011), art critic, who worked for a long time at the Institute of the History of Art Studies, Doctor of Science. The son of Irina Antonova - Boris - was born in 1954. When he was 7 years old, he fell ill, after which he never recovered. Now he moves exclusively in a wheelchair. This is a heavy burden for every mother, and Irina Antonova is no exception. Son Boris has been ill for over 40 years.
Museum work in the 1960s
Irina Alexandrovna devoted almost all her time to the museum, which was not at all easy in times of stagnation, when art was aimed solely at glorifying the ideas of the party. It took a certain amount of courage to manage, let alone organize, exhibitions at a museum of Western art when the country was under censorship law.
Her work in the 60s can be called bold and innovative, since Western art, especially contemporary art, was not honored by the Soviet authorities. During these years, going against the opinion of the Minister of CultureFurtseva and the politics of the party, she held such bold exhibitions as showing the works of Tyshler, Matisse. With her light hand, musical evenings began to be held in the museum, at which Stravinsky, Schnittke, Rachmaninov sounded, but the Soviet leadership did not favor them.
Even during this period, she introduced the Wipper Readings, dedicated to her teacher and former scientific director of the museum, Wipper B. R.
Pushkin Museum in the 1970s
Irina Antonova became the person under whose leadership a complete reorganization of the halls and expositions was carried out.
Thanks to her, exhibitions unprecedented at that time were held - works by foreign and domestic portrait painters were placed in one hall. Visitors could view and compare works by, for example, Serov and Renoir at the same time.
In 1974, Irina Antonova insisted that paintings by Western European artists from the former collections of patrons Shchukin and Ivan Morozov be removed from the museum's storerooms and put on display. They had lain in storage for decades, and thanks to Irina Alexandrovna they were given restored halls on the second floor of the Pushkin Museum building.
In the late 70s, closer cooperation with museums and exhibitions of Western countries began. Thanks to the work carried out by Irina Antonova, the museums of the Metropolitan (New York) and other countries were able to present the works of great artists to the Soviet audience.
Museum during perestroika
In the 80s and 90s Irina Antonova brings to a new levelPushkin Museum. Exhibitions of paintings began to take on a scale of global significance. Thus, the exhibition "Moscow-Paris" was declared an event of the 20th century, as it was the first to exhibit the works of Kazimir Malevich, Kandinsky and other artists who were banned in the USSR.
Together with the exhibits, Irina Aleksandrovna managed to visit many countries, meet outstanding people there, she was lucky enough to accompany others through the halls of her beloved Pushkin Museum: Mitterrand, Rockefeller, Chirac, Juan Carlos, Oppenheimer, the King and Queen of the Netherlands.
To attract the public to the museum, she had to generate new ideas all the time. So, the idea to combine music with visual arts grew into Antonova's joint creative work with Richter "December Evenings".
Great musicians played in the halls of the institution, which brought it to a completely different level both in the eyes of the world community and in the assessment of the role of the museum in the cultural life of the country by the Soviet public.
Schliemann's Gold
One of the most scandalous exhibitions of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts was the 1996 exhibition "Gold of Troy". Many Western and domestic artists believed that her biography was tarnished by this exhibition. Antonova Irina was accused of suppressing the truth about the Troy gold exported from Germany in 1945, which the Soviet Union had previously declared that it had nothing to do with it.
Silence in the Soviethistory was more than enough, but usually historical values returned to their homeland. So it was with works from the Dresden Gallery for example.
The fact that the gold was removed from the store for all to see was an indicator of the openness of the new Russian government.
Museum Anniversary
In 1998, the centenary of the laying of the Pushkin Museum was celebrated on a grand scale. In 1898 Nicholas II was present at the laying of the first stone. The celebration took place at the Bolshoi Theater and was marked by a grandiose concert of the best musicians, singers and dancers.
Thanks to its director, the Pushkin Museum is on a par with such significant "centers" of culture as the Louvre, the Hermitage, the Metropolitan, the Prado, the British Museum and others.
Pushkin Museum in the new millennium
With the beginning of the new century, multiple changes began to take place in the museum. So, it has grown significantly thanks to Irina Alexandrovna. New museums appeared on the territory - impressionists, private collections, the Children's Center. But, according to the director, this is not enough. Considering that the collection of the Pushkin Museum has more than 600,000 works of art, of which only 1.5% are exhibited in the viewing halls, then full-fledged work requires the construction of a real museum town.
Funds have been allocated for the expansion of the museum, so in time it may well become a real city of art and culture.
Family of Irina Antonova
A small family, however, hadof great importance to her, especially Boris Antonov, the son of Irina Antonova. A talented boy, he pleased his parents with his successes, knew many poems by heart, and developed rapidly. At the time when the first child was born to parents who are over 30, he was considered late.
The son of Irina Antonova fell ill at the age of seven. After that, as she herself admits, any problems and troubles began to seem small and insignificant to her.
Treatment by the best doctors did not help, and today Boris is a hostage of a wheelchair. Irina Alexandrovna hopes that there will be a person who will take care of her son when she is gone. Today Antonova is 93 years old, but this active, creative and purposeful woman is still working.
Now she is the president of the Pushkin Museum and continues to take an active part in his life. She is also a member of the advisers to the President of the Russian Federation.
Merit
Today, Irina Alexandrovna has more than 100 publications, work in the museum, a huge contribution to the cultural development of the country. For her services, she was awarded the Order of the October Revolution, the Red Banner of Labor, "For Services to the Patronymic" 1st and 2nd degrees, she is a full member of the Russian and Madrid Academies, has the French Order of the Commander of Arts and Literature and the Italian Order of Merit.
She was not only the director of a great museum, but also taught at the Institute of Oriental Languages in Paris, in the department of art history at Moscow State University, at the Institutecinematography.
For 12 years, Antonova was the vice-president of the Council of Museums at UNESCO, and now she is an honorary member. Together with outstanding cultural figures of the country, he is a permanent member of the jury of the independent competition "Triumph".
At her age, Irina Alexandrovna constantly goes to theatrical performances, concerts, to the circus. The habit of going to cultural performances twice a week was instilled in her by her parents as a child. She loves ballet, music, theater very much, she drives a car with pleasure. It was the car that Irina Antonova called her fortress.
