S.D. Delegation Returns With Tentative Agreements on Soviet Art Fest Exhibits

A delegation of San Diego government and arts officials has returned from the Soviet Union with five tentative agreements specifying that at least three Soviet-owned Faberge eggs and about 30 Russian icons and religious relics will be exhibited during the Soviet arts festival here next year.

The head of the delegation said group members also came home with a growing sense that they will not meet a Christmas deadline for signing contracts for all 19 events in the $6.25-million festival.

“They seem to be very cooperative about it, but it’s a slow process,” a visibly fatigued J. Stacey Sullivan said Thursday. “You can’t make them do things any faster.”

Sullivan, chairman of the Festival Advisory Committee, spoke to reporters at a press conference one day after returning from more than a week in the Soviet Union. The visit’s chief purpose was to focus on the festival’s large “anchor” events, such as the exhibits of icons and the ornamental eggs, he said.

As a result of the talks, the 125-member State Leningrad Philharmonic may come to San Diego as part of the festival, Sullivan said. And progress was made in efforts to bring the Maly Theatre of Leningrad’s mammoth production of the contemporary Soviet play “Brothers and Sisters.”

However, the delegation was frustrated in several instances because key Soviet arts officials were not in the country, Sullivan said. For example, he said he took a gift of blueprints of the Old Globe Theatre and an invitation for the Maly’s artistic director, Lev Dodin, to visit the Globe, but Dodin and the troupe were on tour.

Similarly, San Diego Opera general manager Ian Campbell was unable to audition a number of singers because they were not available, Sullivan said. Campbell plans to return to accomplish that task in a few weeks.

Sullivan said five “protocols,” which are intentions rather than agreements to perform, were signed, including an overall accord with the Georgian state ministry of culture that covers arts elements ranging from icons to Georgian contemporary artists and jazz musicians.

Another tentative agreement was signed with the State Museums of the Moscow Kremlin and calls for a minimum of three Faberge eggs to be provided by the Soviet Union. Publisher Malcolm Forbes has said he will match whatever Soviet eggs appear in the festival, scheduled for October and November, 1989, on a one-for-one basis with Faberge eggs from his private collection.

Another protocol was signed for a major crafts exhibit of between 700 and 1,000 items from all 15 of the Soviet states. The exhibit will come from a Leningrad museum of ethnography. Sullivan, who visited the museum with Martha Longenecker, director of the Mingei International Museum of World Folk Art in San Diego, said the Soviet collection “takes your breath away.”

A protocol also was signed with a marionette theater in Tbilisi, and another was signed with the Fine Arts Museum of Georgia. Hal Fischer of the Timken Art Gallery in San Diego visited the Georgian museum, which agreed to send over about 30 pieces from its collection. About half those will be icons.

No dance leaders made the trip, but Sullivan is hopeful a Soviet dance company will be a part of the festival.