Soviet Coup Puts Museum Art Exchange Plan Into Question

A plan for Ventura County Museum of History and Art to exchange art with a Leningrad museum may be jeopardized by the overthrow of the Soviet government, museum officials said Tuesday.

The agreement for the exchange, signed last November by museum Director Ed Robings and Eugeni G. Girshko, deputy director of the State Museum of History in Leningrad, was made possible by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policy of openness called glasnost .

Robings, who was expected to arrive in Leningrad earlier this week, has not been in contact with the museum or his wife, Joan. But museum Acting Director Charles Johnson said the prospects for the planned exchange of the museum’s art and artifacts with those from the Leningrad museum are now in question.

Congressional officials said there was no reason for concern for the personal safety of Robings or other American citizens traveling in the Soviet Union.

Robings is one of at least three Ventura County citizens who were traveling in the Soviet Union when factions of the Soviet government announced the removal of Gorbachev from office.

Robert Lees, president of Pacific Intertrade in Westlake Village, is in Moscow with his son, Sean, to meet with the heads of Soviet television factories, said Lees’ assistant, Maria Rauhala.

She said that Lees’ said in a telephone conversation late Monday that he was surprised that his meetings were “business as usual.”

“But maybe he hadn’t quite seen it all yet,” she said.