The Hermitage–Ural Exhibition Centre is a satellite of the State Hermitage and at the same time a part of the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts.
Collaboration between the two museums goes back a long way. The Sverdlovsk Picture Gallery (which became the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts in 1988), where the Hermitage–Ural Exhibition Centre is now located (at 11, Vainer Street), became in 1941, at the time of the Great Patriotic War, a centre of evacuation – its halls housed a branch of the Hermitage and around half a million of its exhibits. The museum workers’ valiant feat that saved the unique collection from the war is the subject of a permanent exhibition at the Ekaterinburg Museum entitled “Far to the Rear”.
The Centre’s main building is the house of the merchant Bardygin, reconstructed and adapted for modern-day use, an object of cultural heritage constructed in 1912 to the design of the outstanding Ekaterinburg architect Konstantin Trofimovich Babykin.
The ground floor contains halls for temporary exhibitions of items from the State Hermitage, which are held at least twice a year.
