Hermann Parzinger on the joint project of the Sculpture Collection of the National Museums in Berlin and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow "Donatello and Renaissance Sculpture"
Press release from 05/19/2016
As part of the long-term cooperation between the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, sculptures and fragments from the Italian Renaissance that were part of the Berlin sculpture collection before the war were identified in the Moscow museum in 2015. As a result, the SPK and the Pushkin Museum decided to launch a joint German-Russian project to research these sculptures, which had previously been considered lost. The project started in autumn 2015 and is scheduled to run for several years.
"This project is the result of a new dimension in our relations with Russia. I am very pleased that the director of the Pushkin Museum, Mrs Marina Loschak, was so open-minded and immediately supported the research into the Renaissance sculptures. This shows that the long endeavours to achieve good and trusting cooperation at a specialist level have been successful, even in difficult political times. This trust is also based on the agreement to jointly present the results of the project," said Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, today.
"First of all, the project is about finding out which of the lost works still exist and what condition they are in. We have made significant progress here since 2015, when we learnt about the first five sculptures: 59 sculptures have now been identified, and it cannot be ruled out that a few more will be found. The works are in very different states of preservation. With this in mind, we will develop joint strategies for cataloguing and restoring them. Final results are not expected before 2019."
Further information
- Press images
- News "Reading tip: 'It's about the fate of cultural assets relocated due to the war'" (01.10.2015)
- News "SPK intensifies cooperation with Russian partner museums" (05.10.2015)
- Cultural artefacts relocated in Russia due to the war