Ceremony of Presentation of the Vladimir Potanin Foundation Grants to the Employees of the State Hermitage

7 December 2009, the presentation ceremony of grants of the Vladimir Potanin Charity Foundation to the employees of the State Hermitage took place within the framework of the traditional Hermitage Days in St Petersburg. In accordance with the joint programme of the foundation and the museum, that has existed since 2005, 100 grants are allocated to the museum employees and their total amount in 2009 is 4.5 million roubles.

The goal of the long-term programme of the Vladimir Potanin Charity Foundation and the State Hermitage is to further the development of the museum human resources capacity and to create conditions for fruitful scientific and production activities for perspective employees. Continuous support of the Hermitage, one of the largest and the most significant museum complexes in the world, and its best specialists becomes one of the important factors for further development of the museum, while grant system is an effective means for promotion of the most significant initiatives.

Grant support covers the widest range of the museum activities lines - storage, restoration, creation of collection catalogues, dissertations defence, publications, conferences organization. Grants are given to specialists for their achievements in scientific and editorial and publishing activities, creation of permanent exhibitions, carrying out temporary exhibitions, as well as to employees that take part in the creation of electronic catalogues and realization of technical projects.

The Vladimir Potanin Charity Foundation grants are assigned annually subsequent to the results of the competition. Competitors are nominated by the heads of the departments of the State Hermitage taking into consideration contribution of the employees to the realization of the museum projects, completed in the course of year. Project assessment is carried out by the Grants Commission of the State Hermitage with the participation of the representatives of the Charity Foundation. The Academic Council of the museum makes the decision upon grants assignment.

By tradition the grants presentation ceremony takes place on December 7 on the birthday of the Hermitage. This year the director of the museum Mikhail Piotrovsky and the Director General of the Vladimir Potanin Charity Foundation Larisa Zelkova took part in the event that took place in the Hermitage Theatre.

The books that became the winners of The First Publication competition organized by the Vladimir Potanin Charity Foundation were also presented at the ceremony. The purpose of the competition is to give Russian museums and museum organizations an opportunity to publish their collections or separate exhibits that are of obvious artistic, historical and scientific value but that remain unknown to general public until then.

Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage, and Larisa Zelkova, Director General of the Vladimir Potanin Charity Foundation

At the ceremony of awarding the Vladimir Potanin Foundation grants to the employees of the State Hermitage