2001: The opening of the Hermitage-Guggenheim exhibition centre in Las Vegas, USA

October 2001 saw the opening of the first joint exhibition of the State Hermitage and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation at the Venetian Casino-Resort in Las Vegas. On display were 45 masterpieces - canvases by Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and early exponents of Modern Art - stressing both the differences and the mutually complementary character of these two world-famous collections. The exhibition was sponsored by the Moscow-based holding company INTERROS.

The creation of the exhibition centre in Las Vegas is the first result of the agreement on long-term collaboration signed between the State Hermitage and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in June 2000.

The aim of the collaboration is to make the priceless collections of the two museums more accessible to the wider public. The agreement envisages such forms of co-operation as the exchange of exhibitions, the reconstruction of the eastern wing of the General Staff building and the creation in one of its galleries of a museum of contemporary art, as well as the implementation of joint projects on the Internet.

The agreement envisages the creation of joint exhibition centres which will host exhibitions of classical art and works by 20th-century artists.

The authors of the joint project are the Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky and Thomas Krens, the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The new building, with a floor area of around 6000 square metres, is located within the Venetian Casino-Resort - an immense complex in the heart of Las Vegas. The museum building was designed by Rem Koolhaas, Professor of Architecture at Harvard University and winner of the 2000 Pritzker Prize.

As Mikhail Piotrovsky stressed in his speech, "We intend to use our stocks to obtain a unique cultural effect. The exhibitions that we organize for Las Vegas will also be shown in the State Hermitage in St Petersburg and at the Guggenheim Museums in New York, Bilbao and Venice. Yes, we are aiming to capture a new audience... But the Hermitage-Guggenheim museum is also a new platform upon which we can carry out our research work, create a new model for collaboration in the field of culture and continue to fulfil our main mission."

The Venetian Casino-Resort
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At the exhibition
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At the opening of the exhibition
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