On 7 December the State Hermitage formally celebrates the feast day of Saint Catherine, the saint whose name the museum’s founder, Catherine the Great, adopted at her baptism into the Orthidix faith.
The special programme devised to mark the date each year has come to be known as the Hermitage Days. Over the course of the first half of December, the museum announces its plans for the coming year, makes gifts to its visitors, organizes festive events and opens a whole series of new exhibitions.
In what is now an established practice, a multimedia show takes place on Saint Petersburg’s main square.
By tradition, on 7 December, a day that for several years now has been celebrated at a national level in Russia, the Hermitage makes a special gift to its visitors – free-of-charge entry to the museums. This year the Hermitage is giving people the opportunity to visit all of its display facilities without having to pay!
Those who wish to go to the museum free of charge on 7 December can obtain a ticket in advance through the website tickets.hermitagemuseum.org or else from the ticket offices on the day on a first come, first served basis.
We invite you to acquaint yourself with the programme of events included in the Hermitage Days in 2023.
4 December (Monday)
11:00
Internet meeting with Mikhail Piotrovsky. Online broadcast
The Internet chat with Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, traditionally marks the start of the Hermitage Days. Mikhail Borisovich answers questions from subscribers to the Hermitage’s official pages in the social networks. This year the talk will touch on topics relating to the museum’s exhibition policy. The Director will speak about work with visitors, the satellite centres and the Hermitage Days, as well as how 2023 has gone for the museum and what is planned for 2024.
Questions can be put in advance in the commentaries to the publications or using the special form. It will also be possible to ask something during the live chat in the commentaries to the online broadcast in the VKontakte social network. The link to the actual broadcast will appear later – look out for our announcements.
7 December (Thursday)
Saint Catherine’s Day. Free-of-charge entry to the museum
Traditionally, during the Hermitage Days the museum makes gifts to its visitors and guests of our city. On 7 December this year the Hermitage will be providing the opportunity to pay a free-of-charge visit not only to the Main Museum Complex, the General Staff building and the Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Factory, but also to the Menshikov Palace, the Winter Palace of Peter the Great and the Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Centre, all three of which can only be visited as part of a guided tour group.
Those who wish to go to the museum free of charge on 7 December can obtain a ticket in advance through the website tickets.hermitagemuseum.org or else from the ticket offices on the day on a first come, first served basis (the number of tickets is limited).
Exhibition: “Sèvres Porcelain and Imitations. From Adoration to Deceit”
Winter Palace, Blue Bedchamber (Hall 307)
In this exhibition authentic products of the Sèvres factory are presented alongside skilful imitations and fakes. Altogether, the Hermitage is displaying more than 150 items: vases, tableware and pieces of porcelain sculpture.
Visitors will see articles of such quality as, for example, the table services from the Marshal of the Court’s Section of the Winter Palace. Particular attention is devoted to the “enamel decoration”. This favourite with Queen Marie Antoinette was only used for a period of five years, from 1779 to 1784, but in the 1880s people learnt to skilfully imitate it, including on pieces with authentic Sèvres shapes. The exhibition provides the opportunity to see the difference between a genuine masterpiece and high-quality work from a later time.
Exhibition: “The Hermitage in Photographs – 2023”
Foyer of the Hermitage Theatre
The exhibition reflects the life of the Hermitage in 2023 in photographs. It is a gallery of portraits of members of the Hermitage staff who opened exhibitions, spoke at conferences and took part if museum events. Pictures record the museum’s everyday routine, while the exhibition might justly be called a social chronicle of museum life. Some 100 photographs will be on display in the Foyer of the theatre, spanning the period between December 2022 and November 2023.
Exhibition:”The Hermitage in Publications – 2023”
Foyer of the Hermitage Theatre
The Hermitage presents the books that it has produced over the year. In 2023 the State Hermitage Publishing House brought out more than 50 books of various genres. The year saw the appearance of three volumes of the catalogue of Dutch Painting of the 17th and 18th Centuries, continuing a publication begun in 2017. This represents the first complete scholarly catalogue of Dutch painting from the 1600s and 1700s in the State Hermitage collection. Another catalogue published was of Spanish Glass of the 16th–19th Centuries devoted to the collection of three tendencies within that country’s glassmaking that formed in Catalonia, Castile and Andalusia. Many colourful catalogues of temporary exhibitions were brought out. A fundamental catalogue was published of the exhibition “Egyptomania. For the 200th Anniversary of the Decipherment of Egyptian Hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion”. The State Hermitage also provided readers with catalogues of temporary exhibitions held in its satellite centres and in other museums in this country, scholarly works, monographs and archaeological reports for the year 2023.
8 December (Friday)
Exhibition: “Diderot’s Salons. Exhibitions of Contemporary Art in Eighteenth-Century Paris”
Winter Palace, Nicholas Hall (Hall 191)
A joint project between the State Hermitage and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts acquaints visitors with the formation of exhibition culture in 18th-century Paris through the example of the displays held by the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture that were given the name Salons, and the critical reviews of them produced by Denis Diderot.
The exhibition comprises more than 200 works including paintings and drawings by such celebrated artists as François Boucher, Jean Honoré Fragonard. Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Carle van Loo, Claude Joseph Vernet. Hubert Robert, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, Nicolas Lancret and Jacques Louis David. Visitors will also see sculptures made by Jean Antoine Houdon, Augustin Pajou. Etienne Maurice Falconet and his pupil, Marie-Anne Collot (who created the marble portrait of Denis Diderot); engravings and drawings, medals and pieces of applied art, as well as witnesses to the era of one more type – books and manuscripts by both Diderot himself and his contemporaries connected with the 18th-century Salons. The display presents a panorama of 18th-century French art from the nascent Rococo style to the Neo-Classicism of the end of the century, helping us to take a fresh look at the Age of Enlightenment as a whole.
9 December (Saturday)
Exhibition: “Thinking of Time! Jan van den Hecke. Sumptuous Still Life”
General Staff building, White Hall of Contemporary Art (Hall 354)
This exhibition reveals to visitors the world of objects in the painting from the Baroque era. The 17th-century painting and some genuine masterpieces of applied art from the Hermitage collection interlace with one another in an aesthetic statement with an astonishing multitude of meanings. The exhibition goes beyond merely presenting a remarkable picture after its restoration. This is an elaborate intellectual and philosophical contemplation by the curators and designers of the exhibition of some eternal topics: the impermanence of human existence, its fleetingness and fragility. The focal point is a gem of Flemish painting from the second half of the 17th century – the Sumptuous Still Life by Jan van den Hecke. Thanks to a complex and painstaking restoration, the picture can be presented to the public for the first time.
9 and 10 December (Saturday and Sunday)
Hermitage Days on Palace Square. Multimedia show and the COUNTRY OF LIGHT competition
The façade of the General Staff building with an area of 6,700 square metres will turn into one of the very largest wide-format screens. Almost a dozen rays of light will be used to create some unique video content. The multimedia show on Palace Square will depict the most significant chapters in the history of Saint Petersburg, which became historical milestones for the entire country. The audience will be treated to a unique spectacle with staged scenes, modern arrangements of classic pieces of music and passages from literature spoken by well-known Saint Petersburg actors.
The show will also include the final of the nationwide competition for contemporary media art COUNTRY OF LIGHT (Strana SVETA).
10 December (Sunday)
Exhibition: “The Omani Empire: Asia and Africa” in the Hall of Oman
General Staff building, Halls of Africa (Halls 231, 233)
The exhibition is devoted to the period between the 17th and 19th centuries when Oman united its possessions on the Arabian peninsula and in Western Asia with the east coast of Africa and its inland territories. The display contains a variety of objects used in daily palace life: weapons that belonged to the Sultans of Oman and Zanzibar, decorations and medals, a seal, two Qurans that were in the personal possession of the Omani rulers, an 18th-century throne from Zanzibar and the personal possessions of a Zanzibari princess.
16:00
Open public concert in memory of Yuri Temirkanov
Winter Palace, Armorial Hall (Hall 195)
The concert programme includes works by Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky performed by the Symphony Orchestra of Saint Petersburg (artistic director and conductor, People’s Artist of Russia Sergei Stadler).
Only holders of tickets to the Main Museum Complex will be able to attend the concert.
13 December (Wednesday)
Permanent Display: The Gallery of Peter the Great. The era of Empresses Anna Ioannovna and Elizabeth
Winter Palace, Halls 161–163
New halls of the Gallery of Peter the Great are opening in the Winter Palace. The exhibits tell about the evolution of Peter’s transformations in Russia’s art and culture during the subsequent reigns of Empresses Anna Ioannovna and Elizabeth, between 1730 and 1761. The new display will feature works of fine and applied art from the Baroque and Rococo eras, examples of the traditional Russian art of bone carving and also items produced at the Porcelain Manufactory (the future Imperial Porcelain Factory) in Saint Petersburg. An entire hall is devoted to an outstanding figure in Russian science and culture – Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, who founded the Ust-Ruditsa Glassworks. The display includes unique collections of mosaic and bugle-work panels, in which the central place is taken by a mosaic portrait of Emperor Peter the Great that Lomonosov created personally in 1754.
