On 26 June 2023, at a press conference held in the capital of the Netherlands, it was announced that the Hermitage–Amsterdam Exhibition Centre is to change its name.
From 1 September 2023, it will be known as the H’Art museum. The museum has concluded long-term agreements on exhibition activities with three world-ranking museums – the British Museum (London, UK), the Pompidou Centre (Paris, France) and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington DC, USA).
The Hermitage–Amsterdam Exhibition Centre – the State Hermitage’s satellite in the Netherlands – was created in two stages: the first phase of the project was opened in 2004, while in June 2009 the exhibition centre became fully accessible to visitors. Since that time, 30 exhibitions from the stocks of the State Hermitage have been held there.
“Over 15 years of work we created a splendid museum. Millions of visitors have been able to enjoy a broad range of magnificent exhibitions from the extremely rich collection of a world-famous museum – the State Hermitage in Saint Petersburg,” Annabelle Birnie, the Centre’s director, stated in her address.
On 3 March 2022, due to the start of Russia’s special military operation in the Ukraine, the State Hermitage and the Hermitage–Amsterdam Centre took the decision to close the exhibition “Russian Avant-Garde. Revolution in the Arts” ahead of schedule and to return it to this country.
Museums in the Netherlands have helped the Hermitage–Amsterdam Exhibition Centre to get through the transitional period when no exhibitions were held there. The spring and summer of 2022 saw the implementation of the project “Dutch Heritage Amsterdam”, the title of which many in the Russian media erroneously took to be a change in the name of the Centre itself. The “Dutch Heritage Amsterdam” consisted of a series of exhibitions of a single masterpiece from four of the country’s museums. The Rijksmuseum provided a painting by Johannes Vermeer, the Van Gogh Museum one of that artist’s works, the Mauritshuis a portrait painted by Rembrandt and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen one of Bosch’s great pictures.
At the present moment, exhibition activities by Russian museums outside the country have been suspended, and so the realization of the exhibition projects that were destined for the State Hermitage’s satellite centre in the Netherlands were, by decision of the State Hermitage’s General Director, continued at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.
In the period between December 2022 and late March 2023, the Manage of the Small Hermitage housed the exhibition “Russian Avant-Garde. Art for a New World”, which had returned to the Hermitage from Amsterdam ahead of time in the spring of 2022.
Likewise, on 19 May 2023, the exhibition “OTMA and Alexei. The Children of the Last Russian Emperor” that was intended to be shown in Amsterdam in 2023 opened in the Manege of the Small Hermitage. That exhibition can be visited until 10 September 2023.
Finally, from 1 July 2023, the temporary exhibition “Tsars and Knights. Romancing with the Middle Ages”, which visited Amsterdam during the pandemic – from October 2020 to January 2022, will be running in the Nicholas Hall of the Winter Palace.
“In this way the Hermitage is laying a ‘road of initiatives’,” Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, said. “We are showing in Saint Petersburg exhibitions that have been to Amsterdam. Our colleagues in Amsterdam learnt from us over more than 20 years of joint work and, having gained enormous museum experience, can now engage practically as equals with the giants of this world, such as the British Museum and the Pompidou Centre. It is curious to note that none of the Dutch museums in recent times have hosted full-blown exhibitions from the world’s major museums. Yes, the Rijksmuseum is known for its blockbuster exhibitions in which world-ranking museums participate, but those are its own exhibitions. The H’Art Museum will, I hope, be able to occupy that vacant niche in the Netherlands. We created a superb exhibition space in Amsterdam, well suited to the most demanding of the world’s museum institutions. And we ourselves will create new ones. I wish our colleagues success. Let me note that the first exhibition in the new format in Amsterdam is to be a retrospective of the great Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky.”
