On 8 December 2006, within the framework of the Hermitage Days, the annual celebration of the International Day of Friends of the Hermitage took place. However, this year the Friends had a special event, since 2006 marked an important anniversary for the Club of Hermitage Friends, the 10th year since its founding!

In November 1996, the State Hermitage was the first museum in Russia to organize a society of Friends. The idea of organizing the Club belonged to Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky and it was implemented as one of the special programs for the museum's development. Members of the Club of Hermitage Friends provide essential support to numerous projects for restoration and reconstruction, as well as educational and research programs of the museum. The Club brings together individual and corporate members. Among the members of Hermitage Friends are residents from a number of different countries around the world: in Europe, the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the Ukraine. But we are proud of the fact that the first members of the Club were our compatriots, many of whom remain with us to this day.

Ten years of activity is undoubtedly proof of the program's success and of the way visitors to the Hermitage are involved in it. All these years we have tried to ensure that the Hermitage Friends would be among the first to learn about all the significant events in the life of the museum and would be the first visitors to new exhibitions and new exhibition areas. We are continuing this tradition and during the anniversary season the Friends may expect a great deal more that is of interest: new temporary exhibitions, encounters with specialists from the museum, stories about the history and collections of the Hermitage. For the 10th anniversary of the Club we are preparing special publications and a very diverse set of gifts, ranging from commemorative souvenirs to new privileges for Club members and new possibilities of participating in the life of the State Hermitage.

The International Day of Friends of the Hermitage on 8 December is the one day in the year when all members of the international Club of Hermitage Friends from the various countries around the world are invited to the museum for a general meeting. This year we radically changed the traditional program of the evening, trying to create a real holiday - jolly, with surprises, gifts and congratulations to all. One unchanged feature was the words of greeting from Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky, who expressed his appreciation to the Friends for their love and dedication to the museum. Instead of the traditional concert of classical music, this evening there was a jazz performance in the Hermitage Theatre. Sergei Grigoriev, one of the most famous jazz pianists of St Petersburg, played classical works in jazz variations.

Instead of the official ceremony of awarding Sponsors and Benefactors of the State Hermitage honorary diplomas, the Friends were treated to a special walking tour entitled "From the Friends to the Hermitage." The guests were taken along rooms that they knew well but this time they heard about precise projects and the rooms where they were implemented with their direct participation. In this way, we gave our Friends the chance to learn more about one another and to see how much they have given to our museum, how very much they mean to us. The State Hermitage is proud of its Friends, values their support and awaits them in the museum for the coming decade of the Club's work!

Words of greeting from Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky

Sergei Grigoriev's concert for the Hermitage Friends

The 'special tour' through museum halls