Irina Alexandrovna Antonova is the only museum figure whose name is widely known not only in professional circles. The legendary director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, a person in love with the great art of the past and who brought today’s artists to us, an innovator in museum work—she knew not only how to present art within the walls of her museum, but also how to talk about it, infecting people with her delight, her love. Since the 1960s, she has been giving lectures on art, and over the last twenty years of her life she hosted her own program, “The Fifth Dimension,” which became an anthology of stories about artists, paintings, museums, and collectors.
This book is devoted to a very important turning point in the study of art history—“the eternal themes of art”—and consists of four large sections: “Love,” “The Hero,” “Man and Nature,” and “Still Life.” Each section is accompanied by color photographs of works from the Pushkin Museum collection.