On 15 August 2024, Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, paid an official visit to Nizhny Novgorod, Russia’s cultural capital this year.
He flew there on the Superjet 100 airliner Kaluga decorated with a depiction of the Scythian deer, one of the symbols of the museum. The plane’s livery was created as part of the collaboration between the State Hermitage and Rossiya Airlines.
The first item in his programme was a visit to the Packhouses cultural centre in Nizhny Novgorod located on the Strelka or Spit between the Volga and its tributary, the Oka. The Hermitage Director viewed the concert hall and a gallery that is equipped to current standards in museum practice.
After that, Mikhail Piotrovsky went to the exhibition “Russian Fair. Bidding process. A walk. Balagan” in the company of Natalia Sukhanova, Minister of Culture for Nizhny Novgorod Region, and Oleg Berkovich, its Deputy Governor. The guests were given a tour by Roman Zhukarin, General Director of the Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum.
The exhibition in the Packhouses is devoted to the phenomenon of the fair and its depiction in art. Staff of the Nizhny Novgorod Art Museum together with specialists from some of Russia’s foremost museums spent a year preparing the large-scale display. It is particularly symbolic that the exhibition has opened in practically the same location as was once used for the widely famed Nizhny Novgorod Fair. The concept for the exhibition was devised by Arkady Ippolitov, a well-known Russian art scholar, who passed away in November 2023. He was a Hermitage researcher from 1978 and has gone down in the history of the museum as the author of some striking exhibition projects marked by original curatorial thinking and subtle artistic taste.
After viewing the exhibition, Mikhail Piotrovsky had a number of business meetings, including one with Natalia Sukhanova and Oleg Berkovich, and also talked with Gleb Nikitin, Governor of Nizhny Novgorod Region.
The culminating moment of the day was the opening of the multimedia display “The Magic Hermitage” in the Tseh Multimedia Art Space. The organizers of this exhibition have recreated the atmosphere of the world’s finest museum and presented digital doubles of the Hermitage’s leading masterpieces.
“This powerful innovation in the museum and cultural world has come about thanks to the combined efforts, desire and goodwill of both state bodies and foundations, as well as cultural and technological institutions,” Mikhail Piotrovsky stated. “All of this is brilliantly presented in Nizhny Novgorod, a marvellous city with splendid museums and cultural traditions, wonderful leadership, cultural policy and technological companies. All of that together has made what we are about to see possible.”
