Farther afield.(Victoria and Albert Museum in London Russian art exhibition)

Whither Londongrad?

Museum shows, auctions, and galleries attest to an interest in things Russian that will survive fads and market forces.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London celebrates Magnificence of the Tsars with a sumptuous display of men's ceremonial attire from the Russian imperial court on loan from the Moscow Kremlin Museums' collections, What could be more fitting in the British capital that is currently nicknamed Londongrad or Moscow-on-the Thames for its several hundred thousand Russian emigres and its dominant role in the market for Russian objects and art? However, in the wake of the recent economic crisis, during which the Russian stock exchange plunged by more than 65 percent of its value since May, and huge portions of the November Russian sales in London failed to sell, one wonders if this exhibition constitutes a belated finale to the boon for things Russian? Or does it hint that the Russian presence in the art world cannot be snuffed out by one mere blip on the radar--even a seemingly cataclysmic one?

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According to Lesley Miller, senior curator of textiles and fashion at the Victoria and Albert, the show originated with a proposal for an exchange made to them by the Kremlin back in 2005, not long after the Russian market had exploded. Experts concur that the Russian industrialist Victor Vekselberg's splashy purchase of Malcolm Forbes's entire Faberge collection in February 2004, two months before its scheduled auction at Sotheby's in New York, marked this sea change. Renowned Faberge expert Geza von Habsburg summarizes, "Prices rose slowly until the oligarchs made an appearance at the London auctions in November 2003; then, after the sale of the Forbes collections, they rose astronomically until the end of 2007."

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Although Christie's in London sold the exquisite Rothschild Faberge egg for $18.5 million (a world auction record for any work by Faberge, any time piece, and any Russian art object excluding paintings) in November 2007, the real action had shifted into new areas, especially paintings. That September Russian steel magnate Alisher Usmanov acquired the collection of the late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya days before its scheduled auction at Sotheby's in London for a sum described as "substantially higher" than the roughly $40 million that the sale had been estimated to bring at its highest. This notable assemblage of paintings, porcelains, and objects includes Faces of Russia by Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev, a study of peasant faces painted at the time of the Revolution; and a selection of porcelain from the Orlov Service, commissioned by Catherine the Great for her lover Count Grigorii Grigorevich Orlov from the Imperial Porcelain Factory about 1765.