A Continuing Celebration
In its jubilee year the Hermitage was visited by 3,247,956 people, of which 1,099,629 entered free of charge.
In its jubilee year the Hermitage hosted 26 scholarly conferences, held 26 exhibitions and brought out 60 publications.
The Hermitage celebrated its 250th anniversary with a whole salvo of different events that were intended to, and in our opinion did, reflect the main directions in the development of the museum in recent years. Our Hermitage, following the “Greater Hermitage” concept, has turned itself into a truly global museum and in doing so has invented many things that are new for Russia and the world.
Our report to numerous friends and guests lasted several days and its chief elements were given the name “balls”. The Ball on Palace Square was aimed at all Petersburgers and took the form of a combination of 3D images, poetry and music connected with the history of the museum. The ball for participants in the Cultural Forum, as well as the ball for the societies of friends and partners of the Hermitage, took place in the General Staff building and was the opening ceremony for its new permanent displays. The ball for official delegations was held in the Winter Palace and its highpoint was the presentation of gifts. The celebrations took place throughout the year, during the Hermitage Days, between the Orthodox days of St Catherine and St George, and ended with a grand ball for the Hermitage staff that extended through all the rooms of the Winter Palace.
In its 250th anniversary year the Hermitage hosted international forums: Cultural, Legal, Media and, partially, Economic. During the Hermitage Days, the museum’s St George Hall was the setting for a session of the Presidential Council for Science and Education chaired by the President of the Russian Federation. Following that, the President congratulated the staff and friends of the Hermitage and presented the museum with two Fabergé masterpieces that qualitatively changed the character of our collection of jewellers’ works.
During the year the Hermitage opened new museum facilities: the eastern wing of the General Staff, the exhibition halls of the Small Hermitage, the Spare House and finally, the latest phases of the Restoration and Storage Centre in Staraya Derevnya. These facilities were filled for the celebration with new displays, exhibitions and laboratories. During the celebration year the Hermitage’s premises were also expanded by the inclusion of the Exchange building on Vasilyevsky Island. Outside of St Petersburg we already have functioning satellite centres in Amsterdam, Kazan, Venice and Vyborg, while new museum premises are actively being prepared in Omsk, Moscow, Barcelona, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok.
We live in a complex and unquiet world, both the celebration itself and everything that we did before and after it was aimed at preserving the cultural ties that are islands, or rather bridges of stability in the present world. In this sense we are very pleased with the MANIFESTA 10 festival of contemporary art that was held in the Hermitage and demonstrated that the most burning issues of contemporary culture and cultural politics can be presented without scandals, provocations and insults.
The celebration that took place in the Hermitage should become for us a continuing celebration. To that end we are continuing the same expansion into new facilities and new spheres: architecture, contemporary art, historical performances, celebration around super-masterpieces, virtual reconstructions, digital collections and all sorts of hitherto unexplored dimensions. We have a host of current innovation problems that we propose to solve through our intensive activity together with our friends – the museums of Russia and around the world.
Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky,
General Director of the State Hermitage museum
