Director Marina Loshak leaves the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, which she directed for a decade. Born in Ukraine, Odessa, Loshak arrived in Moscow in 1986. She was appointed director of the Pushkin, which houses the city’s largest collection of Western art, in 2013, and since then has organized a number of major exhibitions, frequently collaborating with international institutions. . Elizaveta Likhacheva, currently director of the Shchusev National Museum of Architecture in Moscow, will fulfill her role.
Losahak’s departure is believed to be the result of political pressure, which has intensified in the Russian art world lately. Lochak’s daughter and nephew, both opposition journalists who left the country after Ukraine was invaded in February 2021, have been labeled “foreign agents” by Russia’s justice ministry. Loshak’s more pro-government successor, Likhatcheva, was employed by a pro-Kremlin youth group some 20 years ago, and later worked for Russia’s Interior Ministry, according to the news site. of the opposition. Agentvo.
Loshak’s apparent ousting comes just weeks after highly respected art historian Zelfira Tregulova was forced out as director of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Tregulova was replaced by Elena Pronicheva, the daughter of a senior military official in the Putin administration. However, where Pronicheva had little art experience before assuming the direction of the Tretyakov Gallery, Likhacheva is said for earning the respect of his peers after taking over as director of the architecture museum in 2017.
“I was the director of the museum for ten years,” Loshak said in a statement released by Pushkin upon her departure. “You need the next person to come with new energy, new thoughts and new ambitions to continue what others have started.”
