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    Categories: 2021

Experts raise alarm over fate of Georgia’s leading art museum amid political upheaval

The Art Newspaper

Experts raise alarm over fate of Georgia's leading art museum amid
political upheaval

By Sophia Kishkovsky
10 November 2021

[Concerns persist that a government-backed renovation of the Shalva
Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts in Tbilisi could endanger its
collection of 139,000 ancient and modern works.]

Uncertainty surrounds a controversial renovation plan for Georgia’s
leading art museum as political upheaval grips the South Caucasus
country. According to former and current staff members at the Shalva
Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts in Tbilisi, its 139,000-strong
collection of ancient and modern works could be endangered by a
relocation proposed by the culture minister, Tea Tsulukiani.
Meanwhile, architectural preservationists have raised concerns about
the rumoured demolition of the museum’s classical-style 1838 building,
a former seminary at which Joseph Stalin once studied.

The museum turmoil coincided with the cloak-and-dagger return to
Georgia of the exiled former president Mikheil Saakashvili ahead of
municipal elections on 2 October. He was arrested and has been on
hunger strike for more than a month—leading to his transfer this week
to a prison hospital—while thousands have rallied in Tbilisi to demand
his release and medical treatment in a civilian clinic. Mass
demonstrations have followed the elections, when the ruling Georgian
Dream party swept mayoral runoffs in Tbilisi and other major cities
amid widespread allegations of vote-buying. Georgian Dream defeated
Saakashvili’s United National Movement party in 2012 parliamentary
elections.

Tsulukiani is an ally of Georgian Dream’s founder Bidzina Ivanishvili,
a Kremlin-connected billionaire who bought Picasso’s Dora Maar with
Cat for $95.2m in 2006 and served as Georgia’s prime minister in
2012-13. She became culture minister in March, having served as
minister of justice from 2012 to 2020. Soon after her appointment,
Tsulukiani announced the renovation of the Shalva Amiranashvili Museum
as “a major generational endeavor” that will require "very significant
human and financial effort”. In July, she said urgent action would
have to be taken since Unesco experts had determined that precious
icons in the museum’s collection are seriously damaged and need to be
moved.

Meanwhile, opposition politicians and opposition-affiliated media
outlets have linked Tsulukiani’s overhaul of the museum building to
the real-estate interests of Ivanishvili, the lead investor behind the
$500m urban development project Panorama Tbilisi, which includes a
newly constructed hotel next door to the museum.

Eka Kiknadze, the museum’s former manager, tells The Art Newspaper
that she was abruptly demoted to laboratory assistant in a reshuffle
after she requested details about Tsulukiani’s plans. The new
director, Nika Akhalbedashvili, a former justice ministry official
appointed by Tsulukiani, told staff in July that the collection would
have to be moved within months. Museum employees and preservationists
have protested that the plan is ill-considered, amid fears that the
collection might never return to the building. According to Kiknadze,
a long-term strategy to move the museum’s collection to
climate-regulated temporary storage in adjacent buildings has gone
ignored.

The collection comprises “the main artefacts in Georgian culture, from
medieval icons to modern Georgian art”, Kiknadze says, with the most
valuable medieval works being known as the Treasury. These were
“supposed to be temporarily [relocated] while the historic building
was undergoing rehabilitation” under a “multi-stage” plan drawn up by
specialists of Georgia’s National Museum, an umbrella organisation
that oversees a dozen institutions including the Shalva Amiranashvili
Museum of Fine Arts. This would have provided a suitable 3,500 sq. m
space “equipped according to all modern standards for storing museum
collections in terms of climate and humidity, with the most up-to-date
micro-climate, fire and physical safety systems”, Kiknadze says.

The abandoned strategy, which is still visible on the National Museum’s website

, was created after the organisation partnered with Germany’s Prussian
Cultural Heritage Foundation in 2010-12 in a cultural “twinning”
programme funded by the European Union. It referred to a design
concept for the Shalva Amiranashvili Museum’s renovation by the French
architect Jean-Francois Milou, who also proposed a masterplan for an
“Avenue of the Arts” to unify various buildings of the Georgian
National Museum.

The current situation “is quite alarming and very offensive because
many years of work have gone down the drain”, says George
Partskhaladze, a member of the Georgian National Museum’s research
council who worked on the twinning project and restoration strategy.

Irina Koshoridze, the chief curator of Oriental collections, has
confirmed to The Art Newspaper that “the transfer of collections has
not started yet” at the Shalva Amiranashvili Museum but she warns that
“no temperature and climate conditions” are in place if objects are
relocated.In contrast, a decade ago the 5,000 works of the Oriental
collection were carefully moved to the Simon Janashia Museum of
Georgia nearby, including 25 early Persian paintings that Koshoridze
described as its “most important and world-renowned” works.

Supporters of the museum recently raised the alarm over the fate of
another prized artefact, the medieval Ancha Icon of the Saviour, which
dates to the sixth or seventh century. In August, the Patriarch of the
Georgian Orthodox Church, Ilia II, asked the prime minister Irakli
Garibashvili to hand over the icon to the Anchiskhati church after
which it is named, for use in religious services.

“The historic building of the Museum of Fine Arts to Bidzina
Ivanishvili, the museum’s treasures to the Patriarchate—this is the
goal for which Tsulukiani, who is capable of all, was appointed
minister of culture,” commented Roman Gotsiridze, a United National
Movement opposition MP, according to local news reports.

Neither the Georgian culture ministry nor the National Museum
responded to The Art Newspaper’s requests for comment. A ministry
statement posted this summer on Facebook decried the poor condition of
the Shalva Amiranashvili Museum, which it said “does not meet the
elementary standards of seismic resistance”. The statement refuted
claims that the building could be demolished, however, adding: “the
ministry intends to save the unique exhibits preserved in the museum”.
Tsulukiani has also claimed that works went missing under previous
museum management.

In late September, Akhalbedashvili, the museum’s new director, accused
local media of spreading lies and said: “the art museum building will
definitely be restored in the place where it is now”.


 

Karapet Navasardian: