1944
The exhibition was housed in the Pavilion Hall and the adjoining galleries flanking the Hanging Garden and, despite the absence of the most valuable items from the museum’s stocks, it did provide an insight into the main sections of the Hermitage collection. The first visitors ascended the Council Staircase on 8 November 1944. In the Pavilion Hall, the 28 crystal chandeliers were lit as they had been before the war.
A Printed Invitation to the Opening of the Exhibition of “Artworks and Cultural Artefacts that Remained in Leningrad during the Siege” on 8 November 1944
"The exhibition was of very great significance: it was the first stage in the restoration of normal life to the museum, a transition to peacetime work, a response to the cultural needs of the population, needs that had never perished. The inhabitants of Leningrad perceived the chance to walk the clean, warm floors of the Hermitage once more as a deserved reward after the trials they had been through, as a real proof of the tremendous victories over the enemy" – Antonina Izergina, a specialist in Western European fine art.
From the memoirs of the restorer Fyodor Kalikin: “I have already been working on the exhibition for three days. I’m working in the Petrine Gallery, at the very start of it, and I have one of the female students of the Academy of Arts as an assistant. Matvei Nikitich [Ryabov] has very sadly fallen ill. In the three days I have done the following: reinforced flaking areas, washed, renewed the varnish and carried out minor painterly restoration (without applying mastic). In all, I prepared 8 paintings to be handed over. And the main thing is that the paintings, that is to say, some of them, are not at all as bad as some people thought, myself included. … Now the Peacock Hall is being glazed and the Council Entrance cleaned. So, starting from the Small Entrance up to and including the Peacock Hall, this part is beginning to regain its pre-war appearance. The sand has been removed, the floors have been washed and even polished a little, and the protective screens placed across the Petrine Gallery have been removed. … More than once I have seen heating crews working to repair the pipeline that supplies hot water to the Hermitage. … I glanced into Loggias today – they’re intact.”
Zhanetta Matsulevich wrote: “Yesterday we participated in voluntary Sunday work, cleaning and installing the chandeliers for the Pavilion Hall that is to be put in order and opened along with the whole exhibition, which is being prepared for the October Revolution holidays. You will know of course that it is to be an exhibition of the reserves, where our department will occupy the Pavilion Hall with sculpture and mosaics, the Petrine Gallery and Petersburg Views with paintings, graphic art, sculpture and porcelain, while all the other departments will be housed in the Romanov Gallery and Apollo Hall.”
Poster: Work to Preserve the Collections
that Remained in Leningrad 1942–1945
On 29 August 1945, the Soviet government adopted a resolution on the return of the museum’s art collections from evacuation. On 10 October, special trains arrived from Sverdlovsk and six museum entrances were opened to receive the collections. Within 20 days, the displays were restored in 69 museum halls.
On 4 November 1945, the Hermitage Museum was once again opened to visitors.