From 14 to 16 November an international scholarly conference entitled Museum-Spectator. 21st Century was held in the Hermitage Theater of the State Hermitage Museum. It was scheduled to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the museum's Education Department.

In 1925 the Hermitage's Tour Office was organized, although tours for groups of workers and soldiers had been arranged before that date, beginning in 1918. This type of work continued without interruption in the museum, even during the years of World War II.

The 21st century has presented new issues to the staff working with the museum's public. The world is changing, the profile of our visitors is changing, as is the psychology of perception. For these reasons the demands made by the public on the museum are changing. The largest museums in the world maintain their traditions but at the same time offer the contemporary visitor new types of service.

Over the course of its 80 years of operations, the Education Department of the State Hermitage has developed various ways of working with the public. First of all, these were born in the different situations in which the museum had to work. Much of what has been accumulated can serve as a basis for exchange of experience.

The first-hand experience îf ay one given museum, though it may be highly productive, is insufficient for the further, more active development of relations between museum and spectator. Only when museums exchange the experience they have accumulated in this field is it possible to develop those forms of interaction between museum and spectator that meet the demands of the contemporary world. All these questions were reviewed in plenary sessions of the conference and became the subject of discussion in a Round Table on 16 November.

To celebrate its anniversary, the Education Department of the museum invited to the conference colleagues who are engaged in educational work in museums of Moscow, Paris, Amsterdam and Jerusalem, as well as specialists working in major institutions of higher learning in St Petesburg.

The French Institute in St Petersburg and the Renaissance St Petersburg Baltic Hotel assisted with preparations for the conference.

At the conference in the Renaissance St Petersburg Baltic Hotel

Conference participants