On 8 December 2005 the State Hermitage hosted a Round Table Discussion on "The Hermitage in Russia."

The Hermitage has been cooperating with museums around Russia over the course of many years. Among the museum’s permanent partners are the Novgorod State Unified Museum-Preserve, the Lipetsk Oblast Regional Museum, the Kaliningrad Art Gallery, the State Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Preserve of the Kazan Kremlin, the A.S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow), the State Museum of the Vyborg Castle, and the Staraya Ladoga Historical, Architectural and Archeological Museum-Preserve.

The Novgorod State Unified Museum-Preserve has been a long-time partner of the Hermitage. This year the Hermitage put on two exhibitions in Novgorod: Festivals - Favorite Playthings of Sovereigns and The Embroiderer’s Art. Western European Embroidery of the 16th-19th Centuries from the Hermitage Collection. Both exhibitions are well known to Petersburgers, but the Novgorod visitors saw updated versions especially created for their museum.

The most outstanding event of the year was the opening of the Hermitage Kazan Exhibition Center, which is located within the Kazan Kremlin and occupies a space of 1000 square meters. In addition to exhibition premises, the center has video and information rooms as well as lecture halls where researchers from the State Hermitage can deliver talks about the museum and its collections. The Center opened with the show The Golden Horde. History and Culture, a unique exhibition in terms of content and breadth of participating institutions: a large part of the 800 exhibited items on display belongs to the Hermitage, but there are also items from the museums of Azov, Astrakhan, Saratov and other cities.

This year the State Hermitage began a large new project entitled The Hermitage - to the South of Russia with support from the Bazovy Element company, which formerly sponsored the first stage of a large-scale program called The Hermitage in Siberia. Just prior to the main events, the State Hermitage Orchestra performed a successful series of concerts in Krasnodar, Novorossiisk and Ust-Labinsk. There was a premiere screening in the Kuban region of A. Sokurov’s film The Russian Ark, which is dedicated to the Hermitage and was created within the museum halls. The film was introduced to Krasnodar viewers by Alexander Sokurov himself. The central event of the project was the opening in the F.A. Kovalenko Krasnodar Krai Art Museum of the exhibition The World of Heroes. Myth and Reality. Works of Art from Antiquity and Western Europe in the State Hermitage Collection. The exhibition features remarkable paintings, sculptures, and items of decorative and applied art by masters from the 12th - 19th centuries, as well as ancient vases and sculptures from the State Hermitage collection. The exhibition is open in Krasnodar until 11 December and then moves to Stavropol.

Words of greeting from Director Mikhail Piotrovsky

During the Round Table session