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Sanctioned Billionaire Transforms Russian Palace Into a Faberge Mecca

Sanctioned Billionaire Transforms Russian Palace Into a Faberge Mecca

(Bloomberg) -- When Arnold Schwarzenegger visited Russia in 2010, Viktor Vekselberg showed the California governor his famous Faberge collection on display at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow.

Three years later, the billionaire found a permanent home for the items at Shuvalov Palace in St. Petersburg -- the city of Carl Faberge’s birth -- spending $40 million to renovate the neoclassical building on the Fontanka River. Today, the Faberge Museum includes more than 1,000 pieces, making it the world’s biggest collection of works by the legendary jeweler best known for his imperial Easter eggs.

Sanctioned Billionaire Transforms Russian Palace Into a Faberge Mecca

“Any true collector makes a collection to put it on public display sooner or later and, ideally, create its own museum,” Vekselberg said in an email.

Faberge Museum director Vladimir Voronchenko, 66, a childhood friend of Vekselberg’s, said he’s building it into a “global brand.” The museum said 689,000 people visited last year, an almost eightfold increase from 2014, making it one of the most popular cultural destinations in St. Petersburg.

Sanctioned Billionaire Transforms Russian Palace Into a Faberge Mecca

Vekselberg, 62, is co-founder of Renova Group and has interests in more than a dozen companies including a stake in United Co. Rusal, the world’s largest aluminum producer outside China, as well as shares of equipment makers Sulzer and Oerlikon. He’s the nation’s 10th-richest person with a $13.7 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

In April 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department included Vekselberg and Renova on a list of oligarchs, companies and senior government officials subject to sanctions that the U.S. said was punishment for the country’s actions in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria, and for attempting to subvert Western democracies. Voronchenko said the sanctions haven’t affected museum operations.

“Like me, Viktor has always been an active collector,” Voronchenko said, adding that they both started in the early 1990s with icons and classic paintings of old Russian masters.

In 2004, Vekselberg acquired an iconic collection of more than 200 Faberge items from the Forbes family for about $100 million. Carl Faberge, who provided Russian emperors and noblemen with numerous precious works over four decades, fled the country shortly after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. He’s best known for a series of 50 Easter eggs that Russia’s last two czars gave as gifts to close relatives. The Faberge Museum has nine of them.

Vekselberg said his purchase of the Forbes collection was made possible after he and his partners sold a 50% stake in Tyumen Oil Co. in 2003 for almost $7 billion.

“Fortunately, I had enough available money,” he said in the email.

In addition to the famed eggs, Vekselberg’s Faberge collection includes other pieces of jewelry, silverware and religious objects. The museum also displays works of other Russian jewelers and silversmiths who were Faberge’s contemporaries. The entire collection includes more than 4,000 items.

Emperors, Dukes

Irina Stepanova, head of Sotheby’s Russia, said Faberge pieces are always among the top lots when they come up at auction. In 2007, a Faberge egg made in 1902 for the Rothschild banking family fetched an auction record 8.9 million pounds ($10.8 million).

“Buying a Faberge item is like buying Marie Antoinette’s tiara,” Stepanova said. “You get a thing that was in the hands of emperors and grand dukes.”

Sanctioned Billionaire Transforms Russian Palace Into a Faberge Mecca

After the collapse of the Russian empire, Faberge masterpieces were dispersed around the world. Many were sold by the fledgling Soviet republic to American industrialist Armand Hammer in exchange for wheat and other products.

Hammer helped make Faberge a household name among collectors in the U.S., which has two world-class sets of works: the Lillian Thomas Pratt collection donated to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Dorothy and Artie McFerrin’s private collection.

Dali, Kahlo

In contrast with the U.S., most museums in Russia are state-owned, though there are some exceptions. Energy billionaire Leonid Mikhelson is building a $130 million center of contemporary art in Moscow. Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club, and his former partner, Dasha Zhukova, founded Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in 2008, and covers part of its annual $22 million budget.

Voronchenko said he has sought to attract new visitors with exhibits unrelated to Faberge. In 2017, works by Salvador Dali were on display, and early last year the museum showcased paintings by Mexican iconic artist Frida Kahlo.

Vekselberg views the endeavor as more of a hobby and a charity than anything else.

“The museum isn’t a business for me,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Sazonov in Moscow at asazonov@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Peter Eichenbaum

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.