'Hermitage 20/21' Project

A determined campaign to bring contemporary art and its admirers into the Hermitage Museum is spearheaded by the new 'Hermitage 20/21' project. Rooms of 20th- and 21st-century art will be a feature of the new museum wing in the magnificent General Staff Building, which faces the Winter Palace across Palace Square. Its reconstruction is to be completed in 2014 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the museum's foundation. The renovated rooms will be used not only to display paintings, sculptures and graphic works but also for installations, performances and film showing.

During the last years the State Hermitage systematically arranges exhibitions of contemporary Western European art. The aim of the 'Hermitage 20/21' project is to make contemporary art accessible to all, closer to ordinary people, provoking in them positive emotions - in other words, to attract a new generation of St Petersburgers and guests of the city into the museum. Temporary exhibitions of works by contemporary artists as well as displays of 20th-century art of long duration have become part of a single long-term programme.

The 'Hermitage 20/21' project is to open a new important stage in the collecting activity of the museum. Within the framework of the project the replenishment of contemporary Western European art will be continued. The museum already owns the works of some of the great artistsof the 20th century - Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, Malevich, Louise Bourgeois and Ilya Kabakov - but it does not have a representative collection of Western European art of the second half of the 20th to the early 21st century. However, its exceptional position as an universal museum of international art gives it more scope than any other to bridge this gap.

Being one of the oldest museums in the world, the Hermitage deals with the history of the world culture, preserving and displaying its outstanding samples. Contemporary art, the history of which is being created today, will be studied in terms of philosophy. Within the 'Hermitage 20/21' project we hope to develop a new philosophical approach to understanding art. The success of this approach will require the accurate identification of what is important in the new art and total flexibility over the manner in which it is presented to the public.

The State Hermitage is open for collaboration with collectors and artists who would like to support the 'Hermitage 20/21' project with their works, as well as with individuals, companies and foundations that desire to help make this campaign a success. To realize this project a working group has been created in the museum headed by Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage. Dr. Dmitry Ozerkov, senior researcher of the Department of Western European art, was appointed a curator of exhibitions of contemporary art. The project is financed by the museum itself, its sponsors and through the assistance of the UK Friends of the Hermitage.

Artists Who Have Recently Donated Works to the State Hermitage

Fernando Botero
Louise Bourgeois
Bernard Buffet
Ilya Kabakov
Robert Rauschenberg
Pierre Soulages
Oleg Tselkov

Recent Exhibitions of Contemporary Art at the State Hermitage

1998 Rene Magritte. Paintings from the Collections of the USA and Europe. Menil Collection, Houston USA
1998 Irving Penn. Photographs from the Art Institute of Chicago
1998 Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth
1998 Francis Bacon. Three Studies for a Crucifixion. From the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
1999 Abstract Expressionism. Three paintings from the Museum of Modern Art, New York
1999 Carlo Carra
2000 Jackson Pollock from the Museum of Modern Art, New York
2000 Andy Warhol: Retrospective
2000 World of Visions: Traditional and Contemporary Art from Australia
2000 The Beauty of Japan Photographed
2001 Louise Bourgeois I the Hermitage
2001 Pierre Soulages : Black Light
2002 Man in the Middle. Deutsche Bank Collection
2002 Kasimir Malevich. 'The Black Square'
2002 Georges Segal: Retrospective
2003 Eduardo Chillida: Silent Music
2003 Bill Viola . 'The Greetings'
2003 Shirin Neshat. 'Turbulent'
2003 Cy Twombly at the Hermitage. Fifty Years of Works on Paper
2003 Nicolas de Stael: Paintings from Museums and Private Collections of Western Europe, United States and Russia
2003 Paintings and Drawings of Mark Rothko from the National Gallery in Washington: The Artist's 100th Anniversary
2003 CoBrA and Contemporaries from Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2003 Looking at Photographs. Museum of Modern Art, New York
2003 Maurits Escher
2004 Robert Mapplethorpe and the Classical Tradition: Photographs and Mannerist prints
2004 Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: 'Incident in a Museum' and other installations
2004 Anatoly Belkin Swamp Gold
2004 Marina Azizyan: Fantastic Dictionary of Tonino Guerra
2005 Futurism. The Novecento. Abstraction. Italian Art of the 20th century
2005 Max Ernst: Three Paintings
2006 Willem de Kooning: Late Works
2006 Jean-Paul Riopelle - Canadian Artist
2006 Visual Kineticism
2006 Hogarth, Hockney and Stravinsky: 'The Rake's Progress'
2006 Sculptor Emilio Greco: Searching for the Ideal. From Collections of Italy and Russia
2006 Vadim Voinov. The State Hermitage Under a Full Moon
2007 Max Beckmann. Works from Museum and Private Collections of Hamburg and Lubeck
2007 The Dance of Quill and Ink. Contemporary Art of the Middle East
2007 Bruno Liberatore. Sculpture and Drawings
2007 Dennis Hopper at the Hermitage
2008 Horacio Garcia Rossi and GRAV. The Geometry of Imaginary/ Space

Exhibitions of Contemporary Art Arranged at the State Hermitage Within the Framework of the 'Hermitage 20/21' Project

• 2007 USA Today: New American Art from The Saatchi Gallery
  
• 2008 Chuck Close: Seven Portraits

The Nearest Exhibitions in the Framework of the 'Hermitage 20/21' Project

• 2008 Timur's Territory. St. Petersburg - New-York. On the 50th anniversary of the birth of Timur Novikov
  
• 2009 Photographs by Boris Smelov

Logotype of the 'Hermitage 20/21' project

Logotype of the magazine Petersburg. Na Nevskom, an information sponsor of the project

Logotype of the Radio Hermitage, an information sponsor of the project

Logotype of the TV company Russia Saint-Petersburg, an information sponsor of the project

Logotype of the magazine Afisha, an information sponsor of the project