Between 27 November and 3 December 2023, Hermitage Days are being held in Yekaterinburg for the eighth time. The programme of events is, as always, full and varied: three exhibition projects are opening, master classes for restorers are taking place, as well as a scholarly conference and the Hermitage lecture centre.
On 27 November, the main building of the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts was the venue for the formal opening of the exhibition “Artists of the Ural Plants. Art of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries”.
The display has brought together over 100 works from private collections and the stocks of Russian museums.
The latter include the State Hermitage, V.P. Sukachev Irkutsk Regional Art Museum, Perm Art Gallery, Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore, Museum of the History of Yekaterinburg and Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts.
Participating in the opening ceremony were Alexei Valeryevich Orlov, Mayor of Yekaterinburg, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, Roman Viktorovich Dorokhin, Deputy Minister of Culture for Sverdlovsk Region, and Nikita Nikolayevich Korytin, Director of the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, as well as the heads of participating museums and the curators of the exhibition.
“I should like to thank once again all the organizers and Mikhail Borisovich and Nikita Nikolayevich personally for the implementation of such a many-faceted project that is taking place as part of the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of the capital of the Urals! I am absolutely certain that the Hermitage Days will continue and will only develop further with each passing year,” the city’s Mayor emphasized.
Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky gave a welcoming address: “I am very glad that the Hermitage Days are acquiring such broad scope: that there is scholarship, and restoration, and three exhibitions.First we are opening an astonishingly beautiful and rich exhibition that is fine in itself. But it is also very interesting philosophically. It is about the way that a distinctive artistic style and artistic life was born in the Urals. On the one hand, freedom after the liberation of the serfs, on the other discipline – because the people were working in industry. All of that in some way engendered in them talent and a desire to create. It is a truly Urals identity.”
The works on show in the exhibition represent various areas in the artistic activities of Urals creators: the icon-painting of Nevyansk, Nizhny Tagil and Yekaterinburg, oil-painting and watercolour. Visitors will see products of private and imperial stone-cutting plants, jewellery workshops and enterprises engaged in artistic iron casting. Of particular interest are the examples of decorated weapons from the Zlatoust Arms Factory, as well as items connected with the activities of the Yekaterinburg School of Art and Industry.
The major exhibition project also includes a scholarly conference devoted to the questions of the formation of the regions artistic industry. On 27 November, at the Denisov-Uralsky Centre for the History of Stone-Cutting, the conference participants were greeted by Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky and Nikita Nikolayevich Korytin: “We are very pleased that this occasion has been incorporated into the Hermitage Days – a tremendous phenomenon in terms of its quantity of events that we are holding for the eighth time already,” Nikita Korytin stated, wishing those attending productive work.
The professional side of the Hermitage Days programme is also represented by a master class in the restoration of plaster sculpture under the guidance of specialists from the State Hermitage’s Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Sculpture and Semiprecious Stone. The lessons began with the theoretical section – lectures by members of the Hermitage staff, and then continued with practical exercises in the restoration tinting of plaster sculpture.
To mark the opening of the Hermitage Days in Yekaterinburg, members of the museum staff flew in on an aeroplane decorated with an image of the famous Scythian deer, one of the symbols of the Hermitage. The new livery for the Superjet 100 airliner named Kaluga was created as part of the collaboration between the State Hermitage and Rossiya Airlines. The aim of the project is acquaint the populace of Russia with its unique historical heritage, and also to connect the cities where Hermitage Days are held with one more thread.
The first people to meet the Hermitage delegation at Koltsovo airport were journalists who with characteristic Urals humour supported the idea by decorating their own headwear with antlers. That gave the start to these Hermitage Days – a celebration that brings together the most diverse people and a whole host of meanings.
