The Hermitage Signs an Agreement with the Consulate General of India

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, visiting St. Petersburg during the jubilee celebration, promised the Hermitage sponsor aid to realize the project of reconstructing the museum’s permanent exhibition of Indian culture and art. The agreement was signed on 1 July, 2003, by Mr. Ashok Kumar Sharma, Consul General of India in St. Petersburg, and Mr. Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, Director of the Hermitage.

The collection of Indian art includes about 2,000 items of the 2nd to the 19th centuries. The permanent exhibition of Indian art was created in the Hermitage in the second half of the 1950s and renewed for the last time in the late 1970s.

Due to finance provided by the Government of the Republic of India and support of the Consulate General of India in St. Petersburg, work at the new permanent exhibition of Indian art is now beginning. First rooms will open in the end of 2003, and the entire exhibition will be ready during 2004.

It will encompass the period from the 2nd to the 19th centuries. Recent acquisitions will significantly expand the exhibitions of ancient and medieval Indian sculpture. Along with a few specimens of Gandhara sculpture, which are already well known to the public, they will show two sculptures of the Mathura school (2nd - 3rd centuries) and a female head from the age of the Guptas (5th century), when the classical Indian art reached its acme. These three items, along with an image of a Shivaite holy man of the 10th-11th centuries (possibly Lakulisa), were donated to the Hermitage by Mrs. Krishna Ribu. Stone sculptures received by the Hermitage from the Indian Government in 1966 will take their place in the display of medieval art.

It is planned to expand the exhibition of small bronze sculpture and show applied art of the Mogul age (17th-18th centuries) and Indian weapons.

The exhibition will also show miniatures of the West Indian, Mogul, Dekhan and Rajput schools.

Mr. Ashok Kumar Sharma, Consul General of India in St. Petersburg

Signing of the agreement