Sergei Ustinov, the founder and director of Moscow’s Museum of Jewish History in Russia remains hospitalised after being shot in the head. His assailant used a non-lethal pistol, attacking Ustinov on Thursday afternoon, 16 July, outside the building that houses his Moscow office and the museum.
Ustinov, a former journalist and the author of popular mystery novels is also a businessman dealing in property in a wealthy Moscow suburb. The building near central Moscow that houses his business office is also home to the musuem, which he opened in 2011.
In a statement on Thursday, the Russian Jewish Congress, of which Ustinov is a member of the presidium, urged Russia’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, to pay special attention to the case, saying that “the demonstrative character of the attack and its proximity to the Jewish museum, near to which it took place, might point to a nationalist subtext.”
An employee of the museum, who wished to remain anonymous, tells The Art Newspaper that “we wouldn’t like to connect this [the attack] to the work of the museum.” They added that Ustinov is recovering from the shooting at point-blank range.
The museum houses Ustinov's collection of more than 4,000 objects that tell the story of Jewish life in the Russian Empire, with a focus on Ashkenazi Jews in the Pale of Settlement, but with a section devoted as well to to Bukhara, Mountain and Georgian Jews.
With its focus on objects and photographs rather than multimedia displays, it differs from the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre, which opened in 2012 in Konstantin Melnikov’s Constructivist bus depot, but the two institutions work together. A joint exhibition on the theme of the immortality of the soul in Jewish culture opened on Wednesday, 15 July.
