No Show

‘It was the spring of 1942, at the end of April. They were boys follo-
wing a second lieutenant training. They helped us carry the exorbi-
tantly expensive pieces of furniture that had been waterlogged (..)
They had brought the boys here from Siberia, and they were moving
the furniture to a hall where it would be safe (..) Of course I had to
thank them so I took them on a guided tour through the Hermitage,
past all the empty picture frames.'
(Pavel Gubchevsky in Leningrad nine hundred days under Siege, a
book by Alexander Adamovitch and Daniil Granin).
The stories that do the rounds in Russia
about the Second World War are vague.
Pavel Gubchevsky's fabulous tale has in
common with other stories of the time the
fact that it was never written down in full and
is therefore difficult to verify. If you want to
know more about it you have no choice but
to do fieldwork, in Russia, and talk to elder-
ly Russians to find out what went on exactly.
Everyone in St. Petersburg knew this story.
The story went that a young museum
employee was put in charge of the large,
empty galleries of the Hermitage, and he
was said to have done several guided tours,
paying special attention to the paintings that
were not there. But there was hardly anyone
in St. Petersburg who could tell me more
about it. After four month's concentrated
lobbying, I was given permission to do rese-
arch in the archive and the library of the
Hermitage. Despite the fact that I found few
if any incontestable facts, I was able to more
or less reconstruct Pavel Gubchevsky's '

36
magical tour' thanks to one of the
Hermitage's remarkable employees and
Gubchevsky's widow, Lyudlmilla Verhoni-
khina.
For the Russians, World War II started
when the Germans invaded their country in
1941. The Hermitage had an evacuation
plan in place for its art treasures well before
the outbreak of hostilities, and had collected
and stored such requisites as boxes, crates,
cork, tools and sheets. The museum was
open on Sunday, 22 June 1942, and when
the Soviet government proclaimed a state of
war at about midday, the former Tsar pala-
ce emptied completely. Evacuation was star-
ted immediately and the exhibits made
ready to be moved. A highly efficient system
had evolved after previous clearances
during the Napoleonic war in 1812, and
again in 1917, the year of the October revo-
lution. Paintings were taken out of their fra-
mes and anything from twenty to sixty of
them put into single crates, accompanied by

37
a list of information on the items they con-
tained. The frames, and the labels, remai-
ned where they were. On 1 July 1941 the
first train left for the Urals, arriving five days
later in Sverdlovsk, where the treasures
were to remain until after the war. The
second train left on 20 July, and the remai-
ning 700,000 objects were awaiting the third
removal when, on 30 August, Iosif Orbeli,
the then-director of the Hermitage, broke
off all activities because German troops had
taken the rail lines around Leningrad.
During these two evacuations, a total of
1,117,000 exhibits had been safely removed
and when they were returned in 1944, it
appeared that not a single work was dama-
ged or lost.
Leningrad was encircled and residents cut
off from the outside world for nine hundred
days. The most notable thing in all the
books about the siege is how much attention
was paid to culture in Leningrad during the
war. Hardship encouraged several self-

38
taught people to start writing, drawing, pain-
ting or making music. Where at all possible,
the Hermitage itself also pursued its artistic
and museum activities. For instance, the
Philharmonic orchestra conducted by
Bravinsky played Shostakovich's Symphony
no. 7 in the Hermitage theatre, where activi-
ties carried on as usual throughout the war.
Among the approximately two thousand
people who lived permanently in the
museum's bomb shelters were several
artists, writers and intellectuals. The climate
must have been very artistic during the war;
much creative work was produced in and
around the museum, despite air raids and
lack of food, warmth and light. All the
museum curators were busy working on a
publication, keeping each other mentally
alert by organising lectures. In the winter of
1941, for example, conferences and lectures
were held in memory of the Azerbaijan poet
and thinker Nizami Gianja and the poet and
father of Usbekistan literature, Alisher

39
Navoi. At the request of the Hermitage,
several artists, including Alexander
Nickolsky, Georgy Vereyskey and Vera
Miliutina, captured daily life in the museum
on paper. These drawings show how empty,
bombed and dilapidated the pompous,
baroque galleries that used to exude so
much glory had become. Most of these dra-
wings are charcoal on paper although Vera
Miliutina also made some wonderful works
in colour. Nickolsky even organised an
exhibition of drawings in his shelter, which
have been preserved in the Hermitage
archive. Several have now been published.
However, until now they were always used
for illustration purposes and never really
came into their own. It is the format and
expressive treatment of material that gives
these works a virtue in their own right, sho-
wing why these three artists were so applau-
ded in the Leningrad scene.
Meanwhile, each museum employee was
recruited to protect the country, the city and

40
the museum. All the young men employed
by the museum joined up to go to war, and
those who stayed behind, mainly elderly
women, took over their day-to-day work and
did the museum rounds. The enthusiasm
with which they did so stemmed from the
idea that their work was done for the greater
good, to protect and conserve their cultural
heritage. Some even say that in doing so
they took the works of art more seriously
than they did a single human life. Even
today, staff at the Hermitage tend towards
the zealous, but by no means to the same
extent as they were in those days. Most peo-
ple went on working there until they died; in
fact, in those days it was routine procedure
that the museum sooner arranged funerals
than it did pensions.
Among the staff was Pavel Filippovich
Gubchevsky, who worked in the science
department and as a guide. Because he had
a serious heart condition, this thirty-five-
year-old Hermitazjnik had been declared

41
unfit for military service, which meant he
was the only young man left at the museum.
A handsome and charismatic man,
Gubchevsky was an outstanding authority
on the Hermitage collection. Entries in the
visitors books from 1935 to 1941 showed
that he was by far the most popular guide
before World War II. Even tours with offi-
cial groups were conducted in a warm and
informal manner, and as every museum
guide does today, he, too, aimed at getting
involved with the group he was taking
round. He also devoted himself to training
young people and developing education
programmes in the Hermitage.
In the spring of 1942, Pavel Gubchevsky
became head of security and was put in
charge of forty-six women (before the war,
650 people had worked as attendants or
guards). They kept the galleries clean and
made sure they were safe, reporting any hits
or shootings. Water and problems with
damp preoccupied everyone in the spring

42
of 1942 and 1943. The trees in the garden
of the Winter Palace had been cut down in
1943, causing large holes to appear in the
ground. Melting snow dripped into the stab-
les under the gardens of the Winter Palace
where a collection of seventeenth-century
French furniture had been in storage since
1941. The furniture was taken out to the
courtyard on sunny days to dry out the
green mould that covered the velvet-like
fabrics, which was then removed. The furni-
ture was in a pitiful state and had to be taken
elsewhere. At moments like those, the
Soviet Army came to the aid of the museum
staff, weak as they were after the gruelling
winters. The young soldiers who helped
with this operation came from the villages of
Vologda, Cherepovets and Ust'-luga and
were on their way to the Ladoga lake to the
north-east of St. Petersburg. These country
boys came to the Hermitage for the first
time and some had never even been to a
museum before. It became a custom after

43
they had done their day's work to take the
soldiers on a tour round the Hermitage,
during which a curator delivered a brief talk
on the history of the buildings and the galle-
ries.
As head of security, Gubchevsky also took
groups of young soldiers under his wing. As
a guide, he knew the paintings like the back
of his hand. Quite spontaneously, he took
the soldiers who helped to carry the furnitu-
re on a tour of the museum, paying particu-
lar attention to the paintings that were no
longer there. His only points of reference
were the empty frames with name plates on
the walls, and his years of experience as
guide. He told the soldiers the same anec-
dotes as he had his regular audience, and
with equal enthusiasm. As he enjoyed edu-
cating the young, this Empty Frame Tour
was probably in the same vein. It is likely
that this tour took place after one of the fur-
niture evacuations, either in the spring of
1942 or of 1943. In his book Leningrad

44
nine hundred days under Siege,
Gubchevsky himself says it was 1942,
although his widow is convinced it must
have been 1943. In fact, she was able to
remember everything down to the last
detail. As she herself talks of 'a few tours', he
may indeed have organised tours in the
spring of both years. The tour I am talking
about here is that of spring 1943; of the
other I found nothing in the archive.
The Hermitage's tour policy dates back to
1930s, when it was decided in seminars to
pay special attention to the subject matter
depicted in the works of art and the stories
they told. Information of a technical or art-
historical nature was omitted for regular visi-
tors. In order to organise excursions that
were coherent in themselves, various routes
were set out. The longest of these routes
took in the entire museum and lasted two
and a quarter hours - and the same route is
followed to this day. At any given moment,
each guide could rattle of his story, whether

45
there was a group or not. Once the collecti-
on was taken away for a longer period, this
automatism disappeared, reawakening the
employees' need to experience the
Hermitage collection anew, works to which
they felt so deeply related. Gubchevsky's
Empty Frame Tour contained all the ele-
ments so characteristic of him and of the
Hermitage. The tour was informal, and he
drew in his audience, made up of soldiers,
who listened to the stories of the works told
without any technical or art-historic back-
ground as this did not really concern them
anyway. No doubt he talked with pride
about the invisible collection in a manner
that was typical of the Hermitage - calm and
collected.
The Route
When tracing the route as it probably was, I
have accounted for the inaccessibility of cer-
tain heavily damaged galleries or galleries
used as storage spaces. The tour presuma-
bly took in the galleries that were regularly
frequented by routine tours, as they contai-
ned the largest concentration of masterpie-
ces. Furniture was moved from the stables
of the Winter Palace (21) to the
Department of Antiquities (20). Groups
probably took the 'Council Staircase' (19) to
the next floor, arriving at the start of the
most popular museum route: the depart-
ment of Western European Art. Here there
were several galleries with skylights, which
Gubchevsky put to good use. Other, smaller
galleries were dark because wooden panel-
ling had been placed against the windows.
With the empty frames on the walls, the
department of Western Art looked particu-
larly imposing. Moreover, it was in this
department that Gubchevsky's favourite
paintings used to be, the Dutch Art of the

50
seventeenth century, and Rembrandt.
He came to the Pavilion Hall (2) after
ascending the Council Staircase. From here,
he could have walked back to early Italian
painting and the Italian Renaissance (3 to
19). Around the corner were the skylight
halls: the Large and the Small Italian Halls
(31, 32) followed by the Cabinet of Spanish
Painting (35). It is highly likely that
Gubchevsky did not skip the Tent Hall with
Dutch Art of the seventeenth century, in my
view the most impressive room (46). He
probably also walked through the other gal-
leries dedicated to Dutch art (47-49) until
he came to the Rembrandt Room (50). It is
also likely that he showed the soldiers the
Throne Room (64), the Arsenal Room (65)
and the largest gallery in the Winter Palace,
the Nicolas Hall (61). Just outside the
Nicolas Hall was the Main Staircase, which
the soldiers probably also saw.
In his book 'The Invisible Collection',
Stefan Zweig describes a collector showing
an art dealer his rich collection of prints.
The man is blind and does not know that
his masterpieces were sold for next to
nothing a long time ago. Leafing through the
portfolios, he recalls all the prints in detail.
He is the only person in the room who does
not know that the portfolios are empty. The
exceptional fact about my story is that
Gubchevsky is not a fictive person, and that
the tour was really conducted. Gubchevsky
was himself surprised to find that the sol-
diers took up everything very well, and that
they really 'saw' the paintings. It is a phant-
omlike story and one that is associated with
the Hermitage's ambience as it was then.
Director Iosif Orbeli, Pavel Gubchevsky
and chief curator Michael Dobroklonsky
were the only people to do inspection
rounds. They walked on their own through
the museum at night, reporting any damages
or faults in the galleries, and it was difficult

52
and dangerous work. If you walk through
the Hermitage you can easily cover a distan-
ce of about twenty kilometres. However,
not all the galleries had priority and some
were not visited for days. If something had
happened to them - and that was not incon-
ceivable what with it being dark and with all
the holes in the walls and the floors - there
was a risk that they would not be found in
time and might even die. There again, loo-
kout duty was a unique experience in itself,
as they were the only ones to see the galle-
ries so completely empty, deserted and
pitch-dark.
I talked to writer Daniil Granin about his
mystic experience in the deserted
Hermitage galleries. He recalled an incident
after the war when he was completely alone
in the near-dark Hermitage. He remembe-
red a mysterious and inexplicable atmos-
phere that allowed him to see the paintings
far better in the dark than he had ever seen
them when they were lit up. I have found

53
that most Russians I spoke to were far more
prosaic than the Dutch I usually have dea-
lings with. Besides, a museum like the
Hermitage is shrouded in mystery - emplo-
yees see it as a church and visitors as a tem-
ple. Swearing is absolutely not done, people
are expected to talk to one another calmly
and quietly and behave in a sedate manner,
otherwise they are reprimanded by the
attendant, who holds absolute sway over the
gallery. Both inside and out, the propor-
tions of the museum are superhuman, visi-
tors gaze in wonder at works by artists, some
of whom having gone down in history as
demigods. This place brings forth stories
that border on the unreal. Whatever it was
Granin experienced in the galleries, he
either could not or would not enlarge on it.
Probably for that same reason, Gubchevsky
never made any notes about his tour nor has
anyone ever investigated it: nobody seems
to feel the need for tangible evidence. This
was something I was unable to understand

54
during my stay in Russia. Why had the
museum not documented an event such as
this? After searching around in the archive
for two days, I was told that it would be in
my own interest to spend my time elsewhe-
re. With the exception of a single sentence
in a book by former director B.B.
Piotrovsky, there was nothing in the entire
archive about the tour. I then started to col-
lect more general information on the
museum during the war. Armed with this
knowledge, as well as the atmosphere conju-
red up by Alexander Nickolsky and Vera
Miliutina, I was able to build a picture in my
mind of the time and the circumstances in
which this tour took place.
That aesthetics can be an important thing to
hold on to in a crisis we see not only in
Leningrad but also in the series of exhibi-
tions entitled 'Picture of the Month' held at
the National Gallery in London during
World War II. The National Gallery's col-
lection was supposed to stay in the Welsh
mines until after the war. However, sculptor
Charles Wheeler was so disappointed that
Rembrandt's 'Portrait of Margaretha de
Geer', which had been purchased just
recently in 1941, was no longer to be seen in
London that he suggested the following. For
all those people who found solace in loo-
king at these kinds of masterpieces, one
work of art should be on view for one week,
irrespective of the risk. Apparently, there
were plenty who shared this view because
his suggestion was well-received and Mrs
Geer, a descendant of Margaretha, came on
a visit to London. The work was put on dis-
play - not just for a week but for a whole
month. It was a huge success, and each

56
month a new masterpiece would be on dis-
play in the otherwise empty museum. Pieter
de Hooch's 'The Courtyard of a house in
Delft' attracted 15,000 visitors in twenty-
eight days, and in the space of eighteen
days, 18,000 people came to see Botticelli's
'Mystic Nativity'. Particularly in this time of
crisis, aesthetic beauty was greatly sought
after, and the institute considered it a duty
to display art. But in the Hermitage there
was nothing to display. Gubchevsky never-
theless felt a longing for 'his' collection, con-
sidering it his duty to imbue the public with
a sense of 'aesthetic knowledge and pleasu-
re'. He decided to express his longings by
assuming the role of artist himself. In
Russia's state museum he succeeded in cre-
ating a conceptual work of art. The
Hermitage is a conservative museum - many
of the paintings in the large galleries have
been hanging in exactly the same spot since
the thirties. The exceptional thing is that
here, of all places, in an institute that focu-

57
sed on conserving classical and historical
works, Gubchevsky's tour touched on a con-
temporary subject. The Empty Frame Tour
speaks about how I often experience today-
's art domain, and how I would like to per-
ceive it. It demonstrates that the public does
not have to be talked down to with such a
profusion of often superfluous information
about the works on display. It also shows
that people can be captivated by a situation
that is the very antithesis of the circus I
encounter in many of today's exhibitions.
My study by no means argues in favour of
reinstating 'old values in art', nor does it aim
to encourage 'classical art', but we can mir-
ror ourselves in Gubchevsky's tour. His con-
ceptual performance was based on an
empty museum and an avid audience. With
next to nothing, he was able to put across to
a group of Siberian soldiers the essence of
the works of art, whereas so many super
trendy artspaces are crammed with visuals
without making a lasting or profound
impression on me.