Soviets Will Not Send Georgia Icons to S.D. : Politics: Tensions caused by the republic’s separatists are blamed as the city seeks a substitute festival exhibit.

Political strife in the Soviet Union has caused cancellation of one of the more highly touted events of San Diego’s Soviet arts festival.

“Masterworks of Metal,” an exhibit of 30 rare, sacred icons from the Republic of Soviet Georgia, had been scheduled to open Sunday at a specially constructed exhibit hall at B Street Pier, but festival organizers and Soviet representatives cited “political difficulties” and “complications related to the Georgian national movement” as reasons for the cancellation.

Festival officials said Monday that they had received a letter from the Georgian minister of culture late Sunday night, after the festival’s opening celebration in Balboa Park, informing them of the cancellation. However, Nancy Peterson, director of San Diego’s Timken Gallery, which organized the exhibit, said gallery officials had been notified last Thursday but were told not to “breathe a word” about the cancellation.

Bruce Herring, festival executive director, said, “We’ve known for about a week that there was a problem, and we worked all last week to try and salvage the exhibit.”We didn’t know for sure until (Sunday) night. We were working feverishly to try and make the exhibit happen.”

The letter, from Georgian Minister of Culture Valeri Asatiani, said:

“A variety of complications related to the Georgian national movement have been raised in Georgia. All this in the end found its realization in even greater desire of Georgian people to express its feelings of national pride deeply rooted in history, tradition and heritage.

“The 30 objects . . . previously committed to the (festival) are the essential part of this rich heritage. Many of the (icons) which date to the 9th Century represent a kind of real symbol of the survival of Georgia and its perseverance through a history of struggle and invasions. The master works . . . have to remain in Georgia at this critical time. The political tensions caused by the proposed travel of these objects would cause unpredictable unrest and strife in Georgia.”

Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s press spokesman, Paul Downey, said O’Connor had no comment. He said the cancellation was a disappointment, but he downplayed its significance and pointed out the festival’s other major attractions, including an exhibit of Faberge eggs, and several theatrical and musical productions.

The festival had touted the icon exhibit in a color brochure distributed throughout the United States. The brochure read: “Only once in a lifetime will the first American exhibit of priceless religious icon art from the Soviet Republic of Georgia travel to the United States--and only to San Diego.”

The exhibit, from the Art Museum of Georgia, was to include examples of icons, embossed metal reliefs, cloisonne enamels, crosses and jewelry dating from the 9th through the 19th centuries. The icons were to arrive in San Diego last weekend.

The icon exhibit was budgeted at about $442,000, and about two-thirds of that amount had been expended, according to Herring. He said the festival will file an insurance claim for reimbursement of all expenses and obligations for the exhibit. The festival had insurance through Christin Speers, a subsidiary of Lloyds of London, to cover expenses if an exhibit were canceled by a state, republic or federal government for political reasons. Officials are still determining the specific dollar amount of the claim.

Construction of the exhibit hall, estimated by Herring at $800,000, was financed by the San Diego Unified Port District, which designed the facility as a permanent addition to the pier. Only finishing touches remained to be completed for the exhibit. Peterson, of Timken Gallery, said it is “the most beautiful exhibition space you’ve ever seen.”

The Port District also contributed $500,000 to the festival for expenses related to the icon exhibit and for an exhibit of Soviet folk art, housed at the pier’s cruise ship terminal.

The festival had full financial responsibility for the exhibit and had hired the Timken Gallery for consulting services in mounting the exhibit. The gallery, owned and operated by the Putnam Foundation, paid for the 80-page color catalogue.

Robert Ames, president of the foundation, said the gallery spent “about $50,000” on the catalogue and “a substantial number” had been printed. He added that the gallery will file a claim for reimbursement from the festival’s insurance carrier.

Herring said about 17,000 tickets, worth $39,000, had been sold for the icon exhibit. He estimated the exhibit would have provided about $100,000 in revenue for the festival.

Refunds are available at points of purchase. However, Herring also said the festival is negotiating for another exhibit, and tickets for the icons may be honored at a substitute exhibit.

“We’re very optimistic about the substitute exhibit that we’ve discussed with the Soviet minister of culture,” Herring said. “We hope it will be settled by the time he leaves San Diego later this week.”

He declined to identify the substitute exhibit, saying it will not necessarily come from Georgia and negotiations are “pretty sensitive.”

Last week, a representative of San Diego’s Eastern Orthodox Clergy Brotherhood criticized the festival, formally known as “Treasures of the Soviet Union,” for representing the sacred icons as Soviet art.

“We were not opposed to them showing icons, but to icons being represented as Soviet art, when in fact the Soviet government has been responsible for expropriation and destruction of many icons, churches and other treasures of the Orthodox Church,” said the Rev. Paul O’Callaghan, acting secretary of the brotherhood and pastor of St. George Antiochan Orthodox Church.

“What is being represented here as Soviet art is actually an expression of Orthodox Christian culture, which has little, or nothing, in common with Soviet art or culture.”

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