foster resigns from pushkin museum expansion project

foster resigns from pushkin museum expansion project
image © pushkin museum of fine arts

british architect norman foster has revealed that his firm has resigned from the 670 million USD project to expand the pushkin museum of fine arts in moscow. after the city’s chief architect, sergei kuznetsov, expressed concern for lord foster’s working methods and demanded that the architect defend the project by coming to the russian capital within a month, a june 5, 2013 letter surfaced that officially disengaged foster + partners from the project. according to reports by the art newspaper, kuznetsov stated:

if sir foster, for one reason or another, refuses to participate further in the work, then, most likely, a competition will be held to choose another team, possibly of western architects…the only problem is that either norman foster must himself work on the project and defend it face-to-face, personally…or he must turn down this project.

foster + partners clarified:

foster + partners formally resigned from the pushkin museum project and stipulated that their name could not be used in conjunction with the project, as confirmed in a letter from lord foster to the director of the museum on 5 june 2013. foster + partners took this action because the museum, for the last three years, has not involved us in the development of the project, which was being carried out by others. this was despite numerous attempts by the practice to continue working with the museum.

see designboom’s earlier coverage of the proposal here. 

scheme of the ‘museum town’
image © pushkin museum of fine arts

the plan to expand and update the largest european museum of art in moscow was approved in 2009 by the government, but stalled soon after over disagreements between civic officials and conservationists. originally intended for completion in 2012, concerns had recently been raised that the revamp would not even be complete for a new 2018 target date. originally, foster was asked by irina anotova, the museum’s director since 1962, t0 reimagine and enlarge the existing building. the result was the proposal of a veritable museum city, complete with tree-lined boulevards and pedestrian area and gardens. the expansion was set to quadruple the exhibition space square footage to 428,000. earlier this july, however, ms. anatova stepped down as director of the pushkin after a 52 year reign.

foster resigns from pushkin museum expansion project
image © foster + partners

the museum has long been steeped in controversy and has changed hands with the whims of russia’s political makeup. officially named the pushkin state museum of fine art, the cultural insitutuon is distinct in that it was not created by czars or merchants, but rather a soviet (economic) elite. the architectural object has long been the barometer of russian political-aristocratic health and a public marker of the national cultural capital. even recent history indicates that the museum itself has almost become an iterative showcase of aristocratic and political power; the pushkin was the repository of the antiquities of the rumyantsev museum, itself disbanded by government decree post-revolution. after a series of infusions from a range of european-replete artistic strongholds, from the hermitage to the collections of sergei shchukin and ivan morozov, the building was shut and turned into the ‘museum of stalin’s gifts’ in honor of his 70th birthday. over 250 statues and 500 busts of stalin remained on view there until 1953. shortly thereafter, the contents of the dresden gallery collection were put on display and later returned to east german government ( objects belonging to the west german government, however, remained unreturned.) the latest upset is unsurprising; in the wake of the official resignation of the renown british architect, the future remains uncertain for the 101 year-old museum.

read more on the art newspaper.