H.E. Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka and Madame Sanja Jayatilleka participated in the tour of the State Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) named after Pushkin organized by the State Protocol Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the 25th of March 2019. It was a second of two such events arranged by the Ministry in honour of March 8, International Women’s Day.
The Heads of Diplomatic Missions accredited in Moscow with their spouses were welcomed by the Deputy Director of the Russian MFA State Protocol Department Mr. Kuznetsov and the Director of the Museum Mrs. Loshak, who spoke about the 111 years-long history of the museum and highlighted that the Museum is open to expositions from different states that may also help to develop cultural cooperation between the countries.
The official part of the event was followed by the excursion through the main exposition of Impressionism (from the collection of the museum), which included works by Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin and other masterpieces on display at the current exhibition that the Pushkin Museum is hosting.
One of the facets of the exhibition, “Guests from Naples: Artemisia Gentileschi and Her Contemporaries” brings together works from the collection of the National Museum of Capodimonte as well as from the collection from the holdings of the Pushkin Museum.
Apart from the Italian and French works of art, this is the first time in Russia that viewers can get acquainted with a unique and very important chapter in the history of modern British art: the “London School” including most notably, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, with 80 paintings and graphical works from the Tate Gallery.
Dr. Anna Ezernitskaya from the Russian State University for the Humanities conducted the tour for the Heads of Missions and their spouses and shared her learned insights into the history of masterpieces, with the guests.
