RUSSIAN ART, HOMEWARD BOUND
The New York Times, November 6, 2002
by James Barron
The Tretyakov Museum in Moscow has become the latest Russian cultural institution to have its own support group in this country. The first thing that the Tretyakov's new best friends did was to donate two works by Russian-born artists who now live in this country: "Lenin on Red Square," by the conceptual artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, and "Death of a Hero," by Grisha Bruskin. The two pieces have not made it to the Tretyakov yet. They were at the Russian consulate on East 9Ist Street on Monday for a white-rose-and- candlelight dinner that featured James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress and a scholar of Russian culture, talking up a favorite exchange program that has almost brought 6,000 young Russian leaders on visits to this country. The Russian-born pianist Vladimir FEeltsman played Rachmaninoff, and Donald M. Kendall, the former chief executive of Pepsi Co Inc. and a pioneer of American-Soviet trade, said that he was just back from a trip to where else? - Russia. He had attended the opening of a Frito-Lay plant. "I wasn't working," he insisted. "I am retired now."
The New York Times, November 6, 2002
by James Barron
The Tretyakov Museum in Moscow has become the latest Russian cultural institution to have its own support group in this country. The first thing that the Tretyakov's new best friends did was to donate two works by Russian-born artists who now live in this country: "Lenin on Red Square," by the conceptual artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, and "Death of a Hero," by Grisha Bruskin. The two pieces have not made it to the Tretyakov yet. They were at the Russian consulate on East 9Ist Street on Monday for a white-rose-and- candlelight dinner that featured James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress and a scholar of Russian culture, talking up a favorite exchange program that has almost brought 6,000 young Russian leaders on visits to this country. The Russian-born pianist Vladimir FEeltsman played Rachmaninoff, and Donald M. Kendall, the former chief executive of Pepsi Co Inc. and a pioneer of American-Soviet trade, said that he was just back from a trip to where else? - Russia. He had attended the opening of a Frito-Lay plant. "I wasn't working," he insisted. "I am retired now."
