The Hermitage in 2010. Summary

2010 is getting over. For the Hermitage it was full of interesting events. This year the Hermitage was visited by more than 2 million 400 thousand people. More than 800 thousand of them attended the museum for free. Among them are children, students and pensioners. The Hermitage’s social program is the main present that the Hermitage gives to all art lovers.

We intend to make the monuments of cultural heritage kept at the Hermitage more accessible to the public. For this reason every year we update and open new expositions. This year new permanent exhibitions were opened: Culture and Art of Middle Asia. Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, Old Siberia. The Fifth Pazyryksky Burial Mound.

In 2010 the Hermitage organized within its territory 23 temporary exhibitions. Among them are such large-scale exhibitions: Wind in the Pines... 5000 years of Korean Art. From the collection of the National Museum of Korea and Picasso. From the collection of the Picasso National Museum. Exhibitions based on the materials of the Hermitage collections had a variety of themes: From Gothic to Mannerism. Netherlandish drawings of the 15th-16th centuries in the Hermitage collection, The Flemish in the eyes of David Teniers The Younger. To the 400th anniversary since the artist’s birthday, Glass Fairy Show. Ancient Glass in the Hermitage collection, Buried Treasurer of Factory Owner Likhacheva, Glass-Bear Room. Panel Painting from the Chinese Palace in Oranienbaum. A glass-bead panel painting was restored by restorers of the State Hermitage.

A catalog has been prepared for each exhibition.

The highlight of this summer became the project Pompidou Center in the State Hermitage consisting of two parts – an exhibition and a festival. The Hermitage implemented large exhibition projects in Russia and abroad: at the Hermitage centers in Amsterdam, Kazan, in the cultural-exhibition center in Vyborg which opened this summer. In December 2010 the first phase of restoration works in the Eastern Wing of the General Staff was completed. The total area of facilities transferred to the museum is 32 500 sq. m. New museum facilities enable the Hermitage to present its collections to viewers in a wider manner.

The life of the Hermitage is impossible without science. 24 scientific conferences held in 2010 were devoted to a wide scope of issues regarding the history of culture and art studies. Results of scientific work are reflected in the Hermitage’s publications. One of such publication i a monograph by T. Malinina The Imperial Glass Factory (Publishing House of the State Hermitage), which was awarded with the Museum Olympus – 2010 prize. The Hermitage was awarded the same prize in the nomination Museum for Children for the program for blind and visually impaired children the Past at One’s Fingertips which classes are held in the museum’s restoration and storage complex in Staraya Derevnya.

This year the museum collection was replenished by unique acquisitions, including items from ancient Caucasian state Urartu, items from the silver service of the Prussian King Friedrich the Great, an illustrated 15th century Chinese manuscript, valuable historical documents from a family archive of counts Balashovs. The Hermitage collections are also replenished due to archaeological research conducted by the  Hermitage expeditions to various regions of Russia and countries of the near abroad. Unexpected finds are sometimes discovered in the Hermitage itself. In April of this year a sculpture group by the Russian sculptor-academician V. Beklemishev was found in an immured niche in a wall of the Winter Palace. It is being restored by the Hermitage specialists who have implemented several dozens of successful restoration projects. This year a complex restoration of the Jordan Staircase of the Winter Palace has been carried out. The restoration of  silver items from the buried treasure of the factory owner Likhacheva has become the most interesting restoration project of the Hermitage.

Everything done in the outgoing year has been done by the efforts of a huge team of professionals of the Hermitage. We congratulate the museum staff and all friends of the Hermitage with the coming New Year!

At the exposition Culture and Art of Middle Asia

At the excursion

The exhibition of Pablo Picasso

Master class for children at the exhibition Wind in the Pines…

Opening of the exhibition Monuments of Urartu

Yard of the General Staff after restoration

Sculpture group Fugitive Slave by
V. Beklemishev

Hermitage-Vyborg center - arch. Uno Ulberg 1930

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