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Culture over politics: Moscow Kremlin Museums gear up for Peter the Great exhibit with UK

The Moscow Kremlin Museums, in cooperation with Great Britain, are preparing an exhibition about the era of Czar Peter the Great

MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/. The Moscow Kremlin Museums, in cooperation with Great Britain, are preparing an exhibition about the era of Czar Peter the Great. The exposition will be tentatively available to visitors in 2019, the museum’s press service informed TASS on Wednesday.

"We have begun preparations for a large-scale international exhibition related to the era of Peter the Great scheduled for 2019, with the planned involvement of Britain’s National Maritime Museum," the press service quotes Moscow Kremlin Museums Director General Elena Gagarina as saying. According to Gagarina, over the past few years, the Moscow Kremlin Museums have had a number of joint projects with the British Council, whose offices in Russia will be shut down amid a mounting spat between Moscow and London. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced the decision to this effect on March 17.

Gagarina cited as an example such exhibitions as "Henry Moore and the Classical Canon of Modern Sculpture" and "Charles Rennie Macintosh: Manifesto of the New Style." She pointed to an important role played by the British Council in the exhibition titled "Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age" held in London in 2015 and in installing the statue of Yuri Gagarin in Greenwich.

The museum’s director stressed that the British Council, "one way or another," contributes to the implementation of all projects related to the UK, adding that this assistance is "very important at various stages." "However, no one is talking about some specific projects, which would be in jeopardy now," Gagarina pointed out.

The British Council was founded by the UK government in 1934 as a public charitable organization. The council began operating in Russia in 1992. According to the organization’s website, among its partners in Russia are the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the Moscow Kremlin Museums, the National Center for Contemporary Arts and the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.