"This isn't the first restoration to leave people in shock," said Mikhail Korobko, a historian of architecture. "There has to be some kind of public discussion of these projects, but that's not how things have been done here for some reason. Now, the fountain looks more lurid than it did when it was first built. It has this sense of coarseness, as though it's a roughly painted, cheap fake."
VDNKh representatives responded by explaining that the fountain's "screaming" paint job is only a temporary condition and that the smalt tones of the restoration are exactly the same as the original's. They claimed that the fountain's newfound shine is the result of "hydrophobic substances" painted onto its surface and said the coating should wash away to reveal the calmer tones visible in archival photos of the fountain.
How much did the renovation cost, and who did it?
VDNKh, a massive exhibition park that was created to commemorate agriculture and industry in the various Soviet republics, is currently undergoing a large-scale restoration effort that includes all four of its historic fountains. Published contracting bids put the total cost of the four projects at 2.89 billion rubles ($44.6 million). The Stone Flower's renovation is the most expensive of the four: that project has cost 1.2 billion rubles ($18.5 million). Its contract competition, which opened in March of 2018, called for the winner to line the fountain with cut and polished granite, restore three cast-iron sculptures, touch up the fountain's mosaics, repair its water bowls, and redo its landscaping.
The St. Petersburg company Renessans-restavratsia (Renaissance Restoration) won every contract for the VDNKh repairs. It received orders for the restoration work itself as well as the development and management of the projects.
Renaissance Restoration, which was founded in 2005, began winning strings of prestigious historical restoration contracts in 2015. Among other projects, it won several contracts to restore landmarks that had previously been overseen by another St. Petersburg company, BaltStroi. In March of 2016, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that it had opened an embezzlement case to investigate the disappearance of funds that were allocated to cultural restoration efforts; it became known as the "renovators' case." The defendants included high-level managers from BaltStroi and bureaucrats from Russia's Culture Ministry.
