On 28 November 2005 the Hermitage Theatre was the venue for an awards ceremony during which the V. Potanin Charitable Foundation distributed grants to 100 employees of the State Hermitage.

The objective of the joint long-term program of the V. Potanin Charitable Foundation and the State Hermitage is to help develop the potential of museum staff and create conditions for productive research and operational activities by promising employees. The amount of each grant is 36,000 rubles.

The grants are being given in support of a broad range of ongoing activities in the museum. These include not only such traditional work as storage, restoration, cataloguing collections and writing monographs. The grants also reward specialists for their success in developing methodologies for budgeting, for creating concepts for a new legal system covering museum work, for creating electronic catalogues, for work to replace security alarm systems and for implementation of PR projects.

Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage has stated that: "Grants from charitable organizations, in this case the V. Potanin Foundation, are a very important form of public participation in the preservation of culture. They create new conditions for intelligent competition and at the same time help to safeguard a certain degree of independence from bureaucratic procedures for the cultural process."

In the words of L.G. Zelkovaya, General Director of the V. Potanin Charitable Foundation: "The fact that we are providing support for activities which are not specific to a museum as such may seem unusual, but only at first glance. A museum, especially a museum like the Hermitage, is a complex organism and for it to develop successfully, it should meet the demands of the times and implement a variety of management and technical innovations."

The grants of the V. Potanin Charitable Foundation are assigned each year on the basis of a competition. Candidates are nominated by heads of the State Hermitage departments and subdivisions on the basis of their contribution to the realization of museum projects that are either underway or completed in the course of the year. The applications are reviewed by the State Hermitage’s Commission on Grants together with representatives from the Charitable Foundation. A resolution on distribution of grants is ādopted by the Academic Council of the museum.

Tne awards ceremony in the Hermitage Theatre

Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky

L.G. Zelkovaya, General Director of the V. Potanin Charitable Foundation