“Hermitage. The Still Life. A Hymn to Life”: a special project by the Saint Petersburg television channel and the State Hermitage

“Hermitage. The Still Life. A Hymn to Life” is a joint project from the State Hermitage and the Saint Petersburg television channel devoted to one of the main exhibitions of the year in the museum – “ARS VIVENDI”. First, an online Internet broadcast lasting more than two hours transported viewers into the setting of the exhibition set out in the Forehall and Nicholas Hall of the Winter Palace. On the evening of the same day, television viewers were able to see the programme on air.

Interviews, stories and performances opened up a portal into the world of Baroque-era art. The invited guests deciphered the artists’ messages, discussed the modern-day art of exhibiting and its idiom, and assessed the significance of a dialogue of cultures.

“ARS VIVENDI. Frans Snyders and Seventeenth-Century Flemish Still Lifes” is a large-scale exhibition project that brings together more than 70 paintings by Flemish artists in the still life and animal genres from the heyday of art in Flanders. Of those, 45 pictures are from the collection of the State Hermitage and 15 from the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.

The first guest in the studio that the TV channel created in amongst the masterpieces in the Nicholas Hall was Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage. He spoke about the significance of the extensive display of “ARS VIVENDI” that has been formed exclusively with the participation of Russian museums, about the dialogue between Old Masters and artists of the present day and about the dialogue of cultures, the perception of art. The Hermitage Director stated: ”This exhibition is aimed at those viewers who come prepared and those who are not very prepared. It is somewhat theatricalized, because there is also music and elements of décor here. All that together blends into a celebration that captivates you, but then urges you to reflect.”

Yelizaveta Likhacheva, Director of the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, shared her view of why an exhibition of Flemish still lifes might be of interest to a viewer in 2024 and how a museum should construct a dialogue with the viewer.

Members of the Hermitage staff participated in the programme. Svetlana Datsenko, an advisor to the General Director, spoke about the implementation of the project. Mikhail Dedinkin, Head of the Department of Western European Fine Art and a curator of the exhibition, shared his opinion of how such an extensive display should be viewed. The other curator, Tatiana Kosourova, Head of the Decorative and Applied Art Sector in the Department of Western European Applied Art, presented unique works of applied art from the museum collection. The broadcast continued with Maria Menshikova, senior researcher in the Oriental Department and keeper of the collection of Chinese applied art and jewellery, and Vladislav Statkevich, junior researcher in the Department of Western European Fine Art and keeper of the collection of 17th-century Flemish paintings.

Further guests of the studio in the Hermitage were Alexander Borovsky, Head of the Department of the Latest Tendencies at the State Russian Museum, the artist Anatoly Belkin and the fashion designer Tatyana Parfionova,

Artists and actors from Russia shared their own impressions of the exhibition with the Saint Petersburg television channel. During the broadcast, the counter-tenor Ivan Petrov performed old madrigals in the setting of the Nicholas Hall.

The broadcast from the State Hermitage was hosted by the presenters of the Saint Petersburg television channel’s regular programme Cultural Evolution: Alexandra Mymrina and Pavel Bogdanov.

The Saint Petersburg channel repeated its broadcast of “Hermitage. The Still Life. A Hymn to Life” on air at 10.55 pm on Monday, 15 July 2024.

A full recording of the programme can be found here: https://vk.com/topspb_tv?z=video-23702661_456273724%2F72ff8272b187876b1f%2Fpl_post_-23702661_550041

We invite you to view it.