On 16 March 2007, within the framework of the Days of Classics, the Hermitage Friends Club held one of its regular meetings.

The Hermitage Friends Club is one of the museum's special development projects. It provides substantial support to projects of restoration and reconstruction, education and research, as well as to programs for the purchase of new exhibits. The Club brings together individual and corporate members. There are both Russian citizens and citizens of foreign countries. The State Hermitage regularly organizes special events for the benefit of Club members, including advance showings of temporary exhibitions, meetings with curators, special visits to museum branches and musical evenings.

On this day the Hermitage Friends were among the first to acquaint themselves with the three most beautiful halls of the exhibition of Greek art, recently reopened following restoration work: the Hall of Athena, the Hall of Heracles and the Oval Room. As is well known, the halls of Ancient art are located on the ground floor of the New Hermitage building, which was built in 1851 according to the design of the famous Bavarian architect Leo von Klenze. In the process of reconstructing the exhibition of Greek art, a thorough restoration was performed on all elements of the interior decoration and replicas of the table-mounted display cases designed by Klenze were especially made.

The evening of the Friends Club ended with a piano concert. The Hall of Jupiter was filled with the sounds of classical music. Professor of the Moscow Conservatory and composer Ivan Sokolov performed immortal works of Bizet, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms and Skriabin which joined together different millennia, centuries and forms of art.

Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage, greets the participants of the meeting

Ivan Sokolov holding the new card of the Friends Club

In the halls of Classical Greece

A concert of piano music performed by Ivan Sokolov