director of the Pushkin Museum wrote a letter of resignation

Director of the National Museum of Fine Arts (GMII) them. AS. Pushkina Marina Loshak resigns voluntarily: she wrote the corresponding statement today, March 20, 2023. About this informed RBC, citing an “industry source”. Information about Loshak’s departure was also confirmed by an employee of a large Moscow art gallery.

RBC reminds that the employment contract with Marina Loshak expires on April 2. Today, reports that she is likely to leave her post have emerged from several specialist telegram channels. In mid-February, information about Loshak’s departure was already published, but she herself denied it.

On February 13, Aleksey Venediktov* wrote on the Telegram channel that Marina Loshak was leaving her post. He quoted the words said to have been spoken by the director of the Pushkin Museum:

“For personal reasons, I am leaving of director of the National Museum of Fine Arts. AS Pushkin. I am grateful to everyone who has collaborated with us all these years and helped to realize brilliant exhibition projects.

Subsequently, Venediktov deleted this message and published a new one, in which he stated that “the voluntary resignation of Marina Loshak has not been confirmed.” Information about his dismissal refuted and the official Telegram channel of the Pushkin Museum.

“The words in quotes are not a quote and were not spoken by MD Lochak. Her contract expires on April 2 this year, until that date she continues to perform her duties,” the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts said in a statement.

Marina Loshak was born in Odessa in 1955. Considered one of the main curators of the Russian avant-garde, she also collects naive art and headgear. Since 2007, she has been co-founder, co-owner and artistic director of the Proun Gallery in Winzavod, the capital. Pushkin Museum im. Loshak has been the head of Pushkin since 2013, before that she worked as the artistic director of the Moscow Manege Association of Museums and Exhibitions.

On February 9, the Ministry of Culture announced that the general director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Zelfira Tregulova, was leaving her post “due to the expiration of the employment contract”, and Elena Pronicheva, the daughter of the former head of the FSB Border Guard Service, General Vladimir Pronichev, who previously worked in the Duma Budget and Tax Committee, Gazprom, Gazprombank and VDNH, from 2013 to 2020 she was the executive director of the Jewish Museum and of the Center for Tolerance, and at the end of 2020 she becomes Director General of the Polytechnic Museum.

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