Officials Say Finn-Captured Russian Art Should Be Returned Home

Finland’s foreign ministry said on Friday it has authorized the return of three Russian art lent to museums and galleries but confiscated by Finnish customs officials on their way back to Russia.

Paintings and sculptures worth 42 million euros ($46 million) were loaned from Russian museums to institutions in Italy and Japan. Them captured Last weekend, he was at the Finnish border crossing, Vaalimaa, on suspicion of violating European Union sanctions imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Finnish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hanni Hyvärinen said in a phone call that the decision was taken with European Union officials. Inside expressionThe ministry said the union plans to exempt certain cultural objects from sanctions.

“The legislative changes will enter into force on April 9, 2022, and these changes will include the power of member states to authorize Russia for the export or other transfer of cultural objects that are part of official cultural cooperation,” the statement said. The European Union said on Friday it was amending existing rules to provide exemptions for “cultural goods loaned in the context of official cultural cooperation with Russia.” It was not said why such cultural goods were exempted.

Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow in the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund research group, said: “Usually under such sanctions, cultural items are exempt because they are intangible and not directly related to the war effort. ”

The seizure had raised important questions about how Europe could afford the return of artworks borrowed from Russian museums, which for decades have sent some of the world’s greatest works of art to exhibitions and provided audiences in the West with a glimpse of rarely-traveled cultural treasures.

Lastst. Art from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and other Russian institutions is exhibited, for example, in museums in Paris, London and Rome.

Advocates of cultural exchanges as bridging efforts had hoped that authorities would adhere to the international agreements governing such loans. But other analysts said art closely associated with the Russian state or sanctioned individuals could be legitimate targets of sanctions aimed at isolating Russia. for a war targeted civilians and devastated cities.

Hyvärinen could not confirm whether the art had already left Finland.

Russian culture minister Olga Lyubimova wrote on the messaging app Telegram that European authorities “clarified that exhibits participating in European exhibitions do not fall on the sanction list”.

He said works of art were shown in two exhibitions in Italy – in Milan and Udine – and from collections in the State Hermitage and museum reserves in Tsarskoye Selo, Pavlovsk and Gatchina; State Tretyakov Gallery; and the Eastern State Museum.

The works exhibited at the Chiba City Museum in Japan came from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Lyubimova said that the Russian authorities have already begun to organize the return of collections.

The long-term impact of the war on cooperation between Russian and European museums remains unclear.

Russian state museums since 2011 Refused to lend works of art to museums in the United StatesThey feared they might be confiscated, and some European art scholars worried that there might be a similar freeze between now Russian museums and those in Western Europe.

the governments of Austria, England, Holland and Spain They have already asked cultural institutions not to cooperate with Russian state museums, even if they have been planning exhibitions with them for years. Russia has also stopped some international cooperation.

Thomas C. Danziger, an art market lawyer who advises on international loans, said the release of artworks in Finland did not allay fears about the chilling effect on loans.

“The basis for international art lending is trust in the other party,” he said. “Even if they have been released, the seizure of these works affects the trust of the international art world in this system,” he said. “Even the slightest risk that a work of art will not be returned by the borrower will be enough to kill most – if not most – of possible international loans,” he said.

Mr. Kirkegaard said that because art can have great symbolic value, European authorities may have decided that hiding the artworks was not worth the potential propaganda value for President Vladimir V. Putin, because the confiscation “could affect his narrative that this is really about it”. The West wants to destroy Russia.”

After customs officials halted work at the border, Finnish authorities argued that the seizures were justified as artworks could qualify as “luxury goods”, a category the EU had recently included in sanctions. However, analysts said this category of sanctions is most likely not intended to cover art owned by museums.

Daniel Fried, a former State Department official who coordinated sanctions policy during the Obama administration, said artworks privately owned by an oligarch or another person or entity on the sanctions list could be confiscated under European sanctions rules.

However, even if any artwork is subject to sanctions, it will only be subject to “asset freeze”, not confiscation, under current European Union regulations. “You don’t have access to it anymore,” said Jonathan Hackenbroich, a policy expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin.

Just as Western authorities have recently confiscated oligarchs’ yachts and other property, ownership of the art will not be transferred and will belong to the original owners, to be returned to them if sanctions are lifted.

Alex Marshall contributed to the reporting.