This post was originally published on artnews.com
Last week, Swiss artist Reto Pulfer, Iranian artist Maryam Hoseini, and German artist Anna Witt demanded their work be removed from the inaugural exhibition at nonprofit Scuola Piccola Zattere in Venice. The show, titled “One Year Score: Primo Movimento,” opened on November 22 and is scheduled to run until March 30, 2025. Three artists remain in the exhibition: Agnieska Mastalerz from Poland and Italians Ludovica Carbotta and Tomaso De Luca.
Scuola Piccola Zattere was founded in November by Victoria Mikhelson, the daughter of Russian billionaire Leonid Mikhelson, a close ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin and a public supporter of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Leonid Mikhelson was sanctioned by the UK government in 2022 and, while he has not been sanctioned by the US, several companies supplied by his operations have been. He is the founder and chairman of Russian natural gas producer Novatek, which supplies gas to Russia’s Sverdlov Plant. That plant was sanctioned by the US in 2023 and makes explosives and ammunition used by the Russian military in Ukraine. He is also a major shareholder of liquefied petroleum (LPG) gas giant Sibur. It has been forced to reduce LPG exports due to shortages of gas tankers amid US sanctions. Sibur supplies materials used in Russian military systems deployed in Ukraine, according to independent Russian media company Project.
Leonid Mikhelson transferred control of two of his companies—Nova, which builds gas pipelines, and logistics firm Optima—to Victoria in 2018, according to Russian newspaper Kommersant. Optima also owns the GES-2 House of Culture, a 585,000-square foot contemporary art museum in the Russian capital that was built by the Moscow-based arts nonprofit V-A-C Foundation. Optima controls 2.3 percent of Novatek’s shares. Leonid Mikhelson founded V-A-C in 2009.
Victoria told ARTnews in an email that Scuola Piccola Zattere is solely funded through “her own personal resources.” However, the nonprofit occupies the building in Venice formerly used by V-A-C Foundation. Victoria has previously served as its head of strategic development and research. V-A-C’s Venice operation shut down in May 2022 and its Italian director, Francesco Manacorda, quit in protest of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Unfortunately, current events have significantly changed labor and personal conditions, which is why I came to the conclusion that I will not be able to continue working with the same dedication that I could be proud of,” Manacorda told Russia’s TASS news agency at the time. “My decision was given to me with much difficulty and repentance.”
Artists Reto Pulfer, Maryam Hoseini, and Anna Witt pulled out of the Scuola Piccola Zattere show after ARTnews asked them if they were aware of the institution’s links to Leonid Mikhleson. They have all since declined to comment. The three artists who remain in the show—Mastalerz, Carbotta, and De Luca—chose not to respond to requests for comment.
In a statement to ARTnews, Scuola Piccola Zattere said the artists’ decision to drop out followed “the publication of some articles that questioned the provenance of the institution’s funding.”
“Despite the statements that have been released on the legitimacy of the funds, which are constantly monitored by Italian authorities, and the communication with the artists on the governance of the institution, which has not changed since the beginning of the collaboration with them, this media focus led to the artists’ choice to withdraw,” the institution said in an emailed statement. “We respect their decision, although we are saddened that we cannot continue to work together on a project based on dialogue, exchange and mutual education, tools that specifically strive to counter the logic that brought to the dramatic conditions of our time. In confirming our commitment to this project, we are guided by the belief that this is a legitimate, valid and necessary initiative precisely at this moment in history.”
When asked if she opposed the war in Ukraine, Victoria Mikhelson told ARTnews, “Scuola Piccola Zattere is a project that completely reflects my values. I think the important tools we have to counter the increasing use of violence is dialogue and creation of cultural contact zones. That is why I think that [a] cultural boycott is fundamentally wrong, as an idea and as a strategy, because it produces further distance, incomprehension and suspicion, all things that feed the clashes. Making space for safe exchange, discussion, free expression of thought is what is humane and should always be encouraged, not silenced. Understanding the possible difficulties, together with the team we put heart into making Scuola Piccola Zattere as a long-standing platform for cultural practitioners.”
Regarding Scuola Piccola Zattere being funded by her “personal resources,” Victoria added, “These are assets that I have owned since before the outbreak of the conflict in 2022. I wanted to put my resources and work in the art field to use for the city that welcomed me 10 years ago and remains and important place on the cultural map.”
In 2023, Victoria’s reportedly received dividends to the tune of 6.3 billion rubles (almost 57.5 billion) for her shares in Novatek.
Scuola Piccola Zattere said Italy’s financial authority, the Guardia di Finanza, has audited and approved the institution’s accounts.
Scuola Piccola Zattere’s artistic director, Italian curator Irene Calderoni, is also the curator of Turin’s Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. In 2010, alongside her compatriot Francesco Bonami, Calderoni co-curated the exhibition “Modernikon: Contemporary Art from Russia” in partnership with V-A-C Foundation. Several of the Russian artists featured in “Modernikon” have since fled Russia after being targeted for opposing the confiict in Ukraine.
“’Modernikon,’ that happened 15 years ago, allowed me to engage with many Russian artists, with whom we discussed specifically the relationship between artistic practice, political urgencies and spaces of freedom,” she told ARTnews in an email. “The issues identified at that time became more acute with the outbreak of the war, but they were already there: what has changed since then is that the space of exchange with the outside, which was opening then, has been closed again. I hope that we will resume this process, and that the spaces of discussion will multiply rather than shrink.”
In response to questions about working with Victoria Mikhelson amid the war, Calderoni said that she “recognizes and respects [Victoria’s] right to self-determination” and that she share’s the European Union’s position of “clear condemnation” of the war.
“I hope for a peaceful resolution of the conflict through the ways of diplomacy and dialogue,” Calderoni added.
Manacorda, the ex-director of V-A-C’s Venice branch and now the director of the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Turin, told ARTnews that the situation around Scuola Piccola Zattere should be based on “terms of engagement [that] are open and honest.”
“I saw that Victoria made a clear statement that she and the project are against all forms of violence and that her intention is to have in Venice a platform for dialogue,” he said in a message on WhatsApp. “Those things are good directions and the transparency around where the money is from (her own) is the only way to allow people to either—in complete awareness—engage with such proposal or not. Now I think it’s about individual choices rather than calls for mass boycott.”
There has not, as of yet, been any major calls for a boycott of Scuola Piccola Zattere.