An Intellectual Marathon PRORossiyu. A Hermitage History of Russian Culture

Last year, the marathon PROVostok took place in the museum, revealing the extremely rich collection of the Oriental Department to its participants, while from 27 to 29 September 2024 the intellectual marathon PRORossiyu [AboutRussia]. A Hermitage History of Russian Culture will be taking place.

Established in 1941, the Department of the History of Russian Culture is relatively young by the museum’s standards, but its collection, made up of more than 300,000 works of art, covers a very broad span of Russian history from Early Russian icon-painting to 20th-century porcelain. That diversity finds reflection in the programme for the marathon, whose participants can look forward to meetings with prominent scholars and keepers of the collections of Russian culture, lectures and informative master classes.

Items connected with the history of Russian culture are kept in other Hermitage departments as well, so this year’s programme involves all the display facilities in Saint Petersburg. Original guided tours will take place not only in the Main Museum Complex and General Staff building, but also at the Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Centre, the Menshikov Palace, the Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Factory and the Winter Palace of Peter the Great. The marathon begins in the Hermitage Theatre with a lecture to be given by Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage.

The Winter Palace, its halls and lesser rooms, are significant monuments of Russian culture. Lectures and meetings with curators within the displays will introduce marathon participants to the architecture of the imperial residence and the tastes of its occupants, beginning with the Elizabethan Baroque and ending with Nicholas II’s apartments.

The marathon’s master classes will take place in the General Staff building, the Hermitage’s main laboratory for contemporary museum practices. The first master  class will be devoted to the painted decoration of porcelain, while the second will combine painting and applied art, with participants being able to make a copy of Wassily Kandinsky’s Landscape (1913) using a felting technique.

The marathon’s finale will be the intellectual game PRORossiyu. The Atrium of the General Staff building will see a contest between teams of staff from the Hermitage, other museums and universities, as well as a group of student enthusiasts. Tricky questions will demand that the players show not so much erudition as an ability to think logically and draw non-standard conclusions. Audience members will also be able to join in and win souvenir prizes by answering special questions.

The Hermitage is an encyclopaedia of world culture written in Russian, while the history of Russia’s culture is one of the main fields of museum work. The PRORossiyu marathon will become a new, striking chapter in that fascinating encyclopaedia.

The full programme for the marathon can be found and tickets obtained on the Russian-language part of the website.