The opening of the Hermitage-Guggenheim Exhibition Centre in Las Vegas, USA
Masterpieces and Their Collectors: 19th- and 20th-Century European Painting from the collections of the State Hermitage and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

On 7 October 2001 the first joint exhibition of the State Hermitage and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation opened at The Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas, USA. The exhibition features 45 works that bring out both the differences and the obvious mutually complementary character of these two world-famous collections.

The display that includes canvases by Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and early Modernists enables visitors to appreciate in full measure the collections assembled by the outstanding Russian collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov.

The creation of the exhibition centre in Las Vegas is the first concrete example and result of the long-term collaboration agreement signed by the State Hermitage and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in June 2000.

The idea of collaboration is to make the priceless collections of the two museums more accessible to a wider public. The agreement envisages working together in the exchange of exhibitions, the reconstruction of eastern wing of the General Staff building in St Petersburg and the creation in one of its galleries of a museum of contemporary art, as well as the realization of joint projects in the sphere of the Internet. The agreement calls for the creation of joint exhibition centres to be used for exhibitions of classical art and the works of 20th-century artists.

The creation of this cultural centre is perceived as a new form of international cultural collaboration.

The joint project is the creation of Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky and Thomas Krens, the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The new building, with a floor area of 63,700 square feet, is located within The Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino complex that occupies a huge area in central Las Vegas. The city is rapidly transforming itself from the world's gambling centre into a cultural and tourist centre welcoming 35 million visitors a year. The museum building was designed by Rem Koolhaas, one of the foremost contemporary architects who is professor of architecture at Harvard and winner of the 2000 Pritzker Prize. The façade of the exhibition centre is made of a special sort of steel never before used in construction. The centre consists of four galleries whose walls are also separated by steel which, in combination with the parquet floors and wood-finished ceiling creates an unusually striking exhibition facility. Natural light penetrates from several points around the perimeter of the building.

In his speech Mikhail Piotrovsky emphasized, "We intend to use our stocks to produce a unique cultural effect. The exhibitions that we organize for Las Vegas will also be shown in the State Hermitage in St Petersburg and in the Guggenheim museums in New York, Bilbao and Venice. Yes, we reckon on capturing a new audience - that is indeed part of our concept., but the Hermitage-Guggenheim Museum is also a new platform on which we can carry out our scholarly researches, create a new model of collaboration in the field of culture and continue to perform our main mission."

Thomas Krens added that the inauguration of the new project was remarkable for several reasons. The Hermitage-Guggenheim Museum (the name on the façade of the building) and the Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum (the name used inside the exhibition centre) is the most striking evidence at the present moment of the wide-ranging collaboration between the two museums which was initiated in St Petersburg a little over a year ago.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Moscow-based holding company INTERROS.

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