General Director of the State Hermitage
Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky was born in Yerevan in 1944. His father, Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky, was a distinguished archaeologist and Director of the State Hermitage from 1964 to 1990.
Mikhail Borisovich graduated with honours from the Arabic Philology Department in the Oriental Faculty of Leningrad State University in 1967, having spent the year 1965/66 at Cairo University. From 1967 to 1991, he worked in the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, successfully defending dissertations for the higher degree of Candidate (1973) and then a Doctorate (1985). In 1991 he was invited to the Hermitage to become the museum’s Deputy Director for Research. In July 1992, by resolution of the Russian government, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky was appointed Director of the State Hermitage.
Mikhail Borisovich has participated in archaeological excavations in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Yemen. He is the author of around 300 scholarly works, including catalogues of Arabic manuscripts, the publication of mediaeval monuments and ancient inscriptions, works on the religious and political history of Islam and Arab culture, as well as the archaeology of Arabia. These include a series of entries on Islamic mythology in the encyclopaedia Mify narodov mira [Myths of the Peoples of the World], a series of papers about the Prophet Muhammad and monographs on The Legend of the Himyarite King As'ad al-Kamil (in Russian, Moscow, 1977; Arabic translations – Sana'a, Damascus, Aden, 1978, 1979), The Fundamentals of Arab-Islamic Art (in Russian, 1984), Southern Arabia in the Early Middle Ages (in Russian, 1985), Yemen before Islam and in the First Centuries of the Hijra (in Arabic, Beirut, 1987), Earthly Art – Heavenly Beauty. The Art of Islam (in Russian, St Petersburg, 2000), On Islamic Art (in Russian, St Petersburg, 2001), Historical Legends of the Quran (in Russian, St Petersburg, 2005), Islamic Art. Between China and Europe (in Russian, 2008), The Two Holy Sites Regained. Futuh al-Haramayn (in Russian, St Petersburg, 2011), Islamic Art in Russia (in English and Russian, St Petersburg, 2021, 2022). He has published a whole series of books on the Heermitage that include The Hermitage. Collections and Collectors (in Russian, co-author, 1997), Great Collections of a Great Museum. The Hermitage (in Russian, St Petersburg, 2003), The Hermitage in the Great Museums of the World series (in Russian, Moscow, 2003), The View from the Hermitage (in Russian, St. Petersburg, 2009, 2014), My Hermitage (in Russian, English and Chinese, St Petersburg,2014, New York, 2015, Wuhan, 2019), For Museums There Are No Taboos (In Russian, St Petersburg, 2016), The Hermitage: from the Scythians to Kiefer. 50 Exhibitions over 25 Years (in Russian, St Petersburg, 2019), Director’s Choice. The Hermitage (St Petersburg, 2019), Bridges of Culture: artiicles, interviews, speeches (in Russian, St Petersburg, 2019), Bon ton: informal conversations recorded by Irina Klenskaya (in Russian, Moscow, 2002), Culture as Scandal: The Hermitage Story (in English and Russian, co-author, 2023).
Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky is the author and presenter of a television series about the Hermitage on the Russian cultural TV channel Russia-K (with some 450 instalments). He also writes a regular column for the Sankt-Peterburgskiye vedomosti newspaper (three collections of them have been published in book form).
Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky is an Full Member of the Russian Academy of Science and the Russian Academy of Arts and a member of the Russian President’s Council on Culture and Art (its deputy chairman from 2001 to 2011). In 2012–17 he was a member of the President’s Council on Science and Education.
He is a professor of Saint Petersburg State University, where he heads the Department of Museology and Conservation of Cultural and Natural Heritage and the Department of the Ancient East, as well as being Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies. He holds honorary doctorates from Kazan State University, Saratov State University and Saint Petersburg University of the Humanities and Social Sciences, an Honorary Professor of the North Ossetian State University, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the European University at St Petersburg, president of the School of Arts and Cultural Heritage of the European University at St Petersburg and the State Hermitage.
Mikhail Borisovich is a Foreign Member of the Armenian Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Member of the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, a Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute and of the Institut de France (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He is President of the Union of Museums of Russia, editor-in-chief of the periodical Khristiansky Vostok [ The Christian East], chairman of the St Petersburg branches of the Russian Orthodox Palestinian Society and the Russian Historical Society, as well as President of the Worldwide Club of Petersburgers.
Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky has been awarded , the Russian Order of Honour (1997), the Order for Service to the Fatherland (Russia, 2004, 2009), the Al-Fahr Order (Council of Muftis of Russia, 2005), the Anatoly Koni Medal (Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, 2013), the Order of Alexander Nevsky (Russia, 2014), the Order of St John of Jerusalem (2015), the Order of Friendship (Russia, 2016), the Order for Service to the Fatherland. Class II (Russia, 2019), the Honorary Medal for Services to Saint Petersburg (2019), the Gold Medal of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg (2019), the Badge of Distinction for a Contribution to the Development of Leningrad Region (2019), the Netherlands Order of Orange-Nassau (1996), the French National Order of the Legion of Honour (1998, 2004), the Swedish Order of the Northern Star (1999), the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2000, 2004), the Armenian Apostle Church’s Order of Saint Mesrop (2000), the Order of Yaroslav the Wise (Ukraine, 2003), the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (2004), the Order of the Lion of Finland (2005), the Order of the Rising Sun (Japan, 2007), the Silver Medal of Amsterdam (2009), the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service (USA, 2009), the Order of the Crown (Belgium, 2011), the Order of Merit for Science and Arts (Austria, 2014), the Order of Service to the Republic of Tatarstan (2014), the Order of Francysk Skaryna (Belarus, 2014), the Medal of Argishti the First (Armenia, 2016), the badge of Commander of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres (France, 2018), the Hungarian Order of Merit (2019), the Duslyk Order of Friendship (Republic of Tatarstan, 2020), the Order of the Polar Star (Mongolia, 2012) and the Oredr of Honour of Oman (2023).
In 2003 Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky was awarded the President’s Prize for Literature and Art, in 2017 the State Prize of the Russian Federation for Literature and Art. He received the formal gratitude of the President of the Russian Federation in 2019.
Mikhail Borisovich is a recipient of the Saint Petersburg public Sky Line prize, the Ludvig Nobel Prize (2021) and the scientific Demidov Prize (2022)
In 1997, in honour of both father and son – Boris Borisovich and Mikhail Borisovich – the International Astronomical Union gave one of the recently discovered minor planets the name Piotrovsky.
On 25 May 2011, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of Saint Petersburg and in 2019 the title of Honorary Citizen of Yerevan.
Mikhail Borisovich is married and has a son and a daughter.
Books about Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky
Yelena Yakovleva, Mikhail Piotrovsky in the series Lives of Notable People, The biography continues (in Russian, Moscow, 2015)
Geraldine Norman. Dynastic Rule. Mikhail Piotrovsky & The Hermitage (London, 2016);
