The magazine begins with an article by Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum entitled
Letting them Touch Eternity
The children's project "Touching the Past" - an integral addition to The Hermitage's cultural Initiative.

"Several of the world's museums are able to share their collections with the blind community, or rather parts of their collections. The museum's bylaws allow certain exhibits to be touched, and from those exhibits choice items are selected for tactile appreciation. Usually these are three-dimensional pieces, sculptures. I'm not sure whether a totally blind guest can appreciate painting; ft reminds me of the surrealist tours during the war when visitors were taken to museums where the walls were hung with empty frames and were told what used to be in each frame.

Our country is slowly changing. We're no longer indifferent, hard, and cruel to people with disabilities, to invalids. Society has teamed compassion - several programs for people with physical handicaps have developed over the past few years. But, even though it might sound cynical, its important to protect a certain balance, an evenness, that while caring for the handicapped, we not forget the fully able. Over the years, The Hermitage has gathered broad experience working with various extraordinary children, and the the program "Touching the Past" developed not only from our work with blind children, but rather from a general conception of elementary education. The program isn't just for disabled children, but for all children. We especially engage people with physical disabilities in the universal process of understanding the outside world, and understanding themselves in that world. Associating with exceptional people such as these children gives us the chance to comprehend something new about our own world. This program for the seeing impaired is not only a philanthropic enterprise: it's also a foray into closer interaction between people, our museum, and society. And for this reason, in my opinion, the program has a ion future ahead of it.

The philosophical side of our program, its major strength, is to take participants to the frontiers of their abilities. With limited use, or complete absence of one sense, other talents and skills develop, enriching the whole person. This complex process expands the bounds of human possibility. Remember Alexander Sokurov's film Russian Ark. A blind woman walks from hall to hall through The Hermitage, her face lit with a level of enchantment at the world of beauty that even sighted people rarely experience. Weak-sighted children develop a sharper sense of touch, and can understand and fee! that which remains hidden from ordinary people. Our program helps develop those natural qualities that are intrinsically connected with these children's unique characteristics.

It is important that we educate people to experience the outside world despite their handicaps. I've seen the weak-sighted children's drawings. In the dim light of partial blindness, as if on stone, their drawings imitate cave paintings, helping us to better understand how art was born when man was just becoming man. This project distinguishes itself as an interesting experiential program, spread over several years. It is based on a firm foundation of experiencing material history through archeology. After all, a large part of an archeologist's work is based on touch.

The Hermitage's vast archaeological collection contains many marvels. But even so, the program "Touching the Past" developed not only thanks to this collection, which starts with finds from the Neolithic era. Several other museums also have exceptional collections of exhibits from throughout archeoiogical history. But only The Hermitage provides the unique opportunity, through oar special classes, to visit the museum's reserve collections. These classes don't replace the museum, but rather form a new mode of interaction between the museum and its visitors. They help solve the problem of access - the museum can't keep its entire collection constantly on display. We hope that the reserve collections will become the center of our work with children, encouraging our creative process to become even more effective and innovative. I hope that our experience will prove useful for the development of other museums not only in Russia, but abroad as well."

Special Issue of the New Maecenas Magazine

Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, at the press-conferense