The Hermitage-Vyborg Exhibition Center is one year old

On 16 June the new Hermitage-Vyborg Exhibition Center celebrated its first anniversary. During this period of time the center successfully held three exhibitions from the State Hermitage collection: Catherine the Great, The Northern War. Capture of Vyborg by Russian Troops of Peter I in 1710, East and West. Art of the Islamic World.

The center was visited by twenty two thousand of people. Among them, along with citizens of Vyborg and the Vyborg Region, there were guests from over 75 cities and regions of Russia as well as 25 countries of far and near abroad. Finish tourists pay a special interest to the center. By their request all information about exhibitions is given as in Russian and English as in Finish.

Since 2008, the restoration period of the exhibition center's building, the Lecture Hall has been operating in Vyborg. Scientific staff of the Hermitage acquaints its listeners with the arts history, museum collections, read lectures directly related to the themes of the exhibitions, presented in the center.

The Hermitage-Vyborg Center pays great attention to work with children: a museum club for children of junior and secondary school age is open; the conference of the senior school students, dedicated to Catherine II was held. During the academic year the exhibitions were attended by three and a half thousand school children from thirty one schools of Vyborg and the Vyborg Region. Absolutely special relations join the center with the students and teachers of the Vyborg Children's Arts School, historically placed in one building with the exhibition center. Young artists have an opportunity of continuous communication with original monuments of culture and art from the State Hermitage collection.

Meetings with museum workers, literary men and scientists are popular with the adult audience. The established Hermitage Movie Club demonstrates historic feature films on a monthly basis among which there were Russian Ark by Alexander Sokurov, Volaverunt by Bigas Luna, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Peter Webber and others.

In February 2011 the Hermitage-Vyborg Center held a formal meeting and negotiations of Governor of the Leningrad Region Valery Serdyukov and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland Anti Stubb and in September it will be visited by representatives of Finish and Russian museums, participants of International Conference Our Common Cultural Heritage on Both Sides of a Border. A series of proposals for joint projects, made at the 11th Russian-Finish Cultural Forum held in October 2010 in Hameenlinna, is also speaks of the interest of art museum of Finland to the Hermitage-Vyborg Exhibition Center.