In 1948 a decree signed by Joseph Stalin closed the State Museum of New Western Art, a Moscow institution housed in the former mansion of modern art collector Sergei Shchukin, for showing art that was deemed bourgeois and not in line with state-sanctioned Soviet Realism. The museum’s collection was eventually split between the State Hermitage Museum and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, but a recent plea from the director of the latter, Irina Antonova, asking Vladimir Putin to reopen the Museum of New Western Art ignited a feud with her colleague at the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, which has been diffused with news that the old institution will reopen strictly as a web-based entity, Russia Beyond the Headlines reports.
“I signed an instruction yesterday: We will open a virtual Western art museum this year for certain,”
Article source: http://blogs.artinfo.com/artintheair/2013/05/22/russia-will-revive-stalin-shuttered-museum-of-western-art-online/