Is it a priceless collectible or worthless Soviet kitsch? The Moscow Panorama goes up for auction.
It could make a great dollhouse, or it could be blown up in a low-budget action flick; it would also look good in the lair of a James Bond villain. Moscow -- or, more precisely, a 19-meter-wide diorama of the city center -- is now on sale at the very reasonable price of $380,000.
Called the Moscow Panorama, the work is currently housed in a desolate shopping mall in the south of the city. It was made in 1977 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution, and later shown in the United States and other countries. After a period in storage, it made a comeback in 1997 for the 850th anniversary of the founding of Moscow. But the owners have now decided that the space could be better used as a supermarket.
On Monday, a janitor flicked his feather duster at the Kremlin for television cameras, hastily putting back one of the turrets after it fell off. The still-impressive diorama had clearly seen better days, as its painted sky had a fold line, and many of the tiny pedestrian figures were now lying on their backs.
Nevertheless, the owners of the Russky Souvenir shopping mall hope that they can find a buyer in time for the Aug. 4 auction. What's up for sale is a fossilized view of Brezhnev-era Moscow, with red flags over the Kremlin and only one visible advertisement, for Soviet car exports. Both the Intourist and Moskva hotels are still intact, while the Rossiya takes pride of place in the foreground.
Scale models depict buildings in the city center, such as the Kremlin and Gostiny Dvor, while a highly detailed painted backdrop shows faraway apartment blocks on the outskirts. A lighting system changes the time of day from dawn to daylight and finally night, when windows in the buildings are illuminated. The streets are decorated with cars, trucks and buses in what may have passed for a traffic jam in 1977.
The auctioneers have received 40 responses to letters sent to companies and collectors' clubs in the United States and Japan, but only 10 from those sent to Russian companies, said Andrei Shurukhin, president of BMG Rus, the company organizing the sale, in an interview Monday. So far, there have been no definite bids for the diorama.
"It will be a pity, of course, if it goes away somewhere abroad," Shurukhin said. "But maybe that would be for the best, because if the auction in August doesn't take place, it will simply need to be taken apart and put in boxes."
The 10,300,000 ruble ($380,000) starting price was set by an expert committee from the Moscow Service for the Protection of Cultural Treasures, Shurukhin said. He said the auctioneers had contacted the city government and the presidential administration for bids, receiving no answer and a "not interested" response, respectively.
When contacted for comment, however, Svetlana Bachurina, a city official responsible for architecture and construction who was involved in reopening the panorama in 1997, said she had never heard of the auction, and asked a reporter to send information. Asked whether her department would be interested in taking part in the auction, she said "that's a very interesting question."
The diorama was made by Yefim Deshalyt, one of the most respected artists in the then-fashionable genre. He also made a similar work, depicting the 1905 revolution, that can still be seen at the Krasnaya Presnya Museum.
When the Moscow Panorama returned from touring abroad, it was simply stored at the VDNKh exhibition center. By the early 1990s, it was set to be thrown away, seen as a waste of warehouse space.
At that point, it was saved by film producer Mira Todorovskaya, who was tipped off by some of the craftsmen who had worked on it. She stored the diorama, finally seeing it displayed at the mall in 1997, and handed over ownership to the mall owners a year ago. In a telephone interview, she described her purchase of the diorama as "a very stupid thing to do."
The Moscow Panorama "was not needed by the city government in any shape or form," Todorovskaya said. She had hoped that the authorities would buy it after the 1997 reopening, but after the "ceremonial opening," there was a revival of "the old policy that it's not needed by anyone," she said.
The diorama's large size makes it unattractive for foreign buyers, Todorovskaya believes. She said that a casino in Las Vegas and a bank in Japan had both expressed interest but then backed out. "I don't think anything will come of this," she concluded of next month's auction.
Cosmos
President
