Piotrovsky alarmed by recent acts of vandalism against museums
GATCHINA. Feb 25 (Interfax) - Hermitage Museum Director Mikhail Piotrovsky is alarmed by the public's aggressive attitude towards museums which, he said, have found themselves in a "battlefield."
"I am afraid museums are in certain physical danger," Piotrovsky told State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, who is visiting the Leningrad region on Monday.
Piotrovsky cited two recent attacks on the Nabokov museum. "I have the impression that censorship is returning as bottles are being thrown, inscriptions written on the walls," he said.
Reports said earlier that the Nabokov museum has been vandalized two times this year. A bottle with a note carrying a quotation about lust from the Bible was thrown into the museum's window on January 10. On January 29 vandals wrote "pedophile" on its walls.
Another inscription of the same kind appeared on the walls of the Nabokov museum in the village of Rozhdestveno outside St. Petersburg last week.