There is a well known expression used by [the mid-19th-century] Chancellor Gorchakov: “Russia is not angry. Russia is concentrating.” The museum is an inseparable part of the country. Like the country, just now it is concentrating. The Hermitage is doing so in various fields.
One of the events of the month was the first flight made by an airliner that has a Scythian deer from the Hermitage collection depicted on its fuselage. An attractive event. The name of the plane – Kaluga – is no coincidence. Next year a Hermitage satellite will open in that city.
The jet bearing an emblem of the museum takes off into the air. The museum is also expanding its presence in the earthly sphere. Some people write with delight that the Hermitage–Amsterdam Centre has closed. Today, however, Hermitage Days are taking place simultaneously in Yakutia, Kaliningrad and Belgrade. Clearly at the moment exhibitions are not travelling outside of Russia, but the Hermitage Days were conceived as a narrative about the museum. In Serbia we presented events that reflect the life of the Hermitage, that show what it is about.
When it comes to innovative technologies, things are clear to everyone. However, innovation also includes what is known as inclusion. Inclusion was born from discussions that we need to help the less fortunate in this world and developed into a systematic expansion of the audience to which the museum addresses itself. It means an opportunity to visit the museum for those who cannot see or cannot hear, or have difficulties walking, or lack wealth or education… We need not to attract people in, but to give everyone the opportunity to find in the museum what was previously inaccessible to them for a variety of reasons.
We have very recently held two inclusive festivals “Art in Feelings” devoted to Classical Antiquity and the Empire style. Placed next to the actual exhibits in the halls were tactile copies that everyone likes to touch. We took to Belgrade the exhibition “Invisible Art” that had a successful run with us. It presents the results of many years of efforts in the sphere of creating replicas of artworks for blind and partially sighted people. It features bas-reliefs reproducing motifs from the Penjikent murals, tactile copies of parts of the Pazyryk carpet, a relief model of Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes, and much else. These things are produced by our restorers using the latest technologies. People are able to touch them. We forget about the technique of weaving a carpet when we see it behind glass. You get a better sense of wall paintings when you run your hand over them – it’s another impression and another form of narrative. In Belgrade a round table discussion was held on inclusion. People have always talked about the accessibility of art, but inclusion is accessibility of a higher order. We are not opening wide the door to the museum, but providing the keys, showing what was previously inaccessible.
The Hermitage is an imperial museum. It tells about imperial history in its displays and exhibitions. Many imperial table services are kept in special storerooms. They served as the basis for the creation of replicas by modern-day artists of the Imperial Porcelain Factory. In the National Museum in Belgrade, they are participating in the exhibition “Porcelain of the Tsars”. I think that we will be showing it here too. Porcelain is one of the Hermitage’s main themes. We collect it, hold exhibitions every year, collaborate with today’s Imperial Porcelain Factory. The exhibition in Belgrade is being accompanied by lectures on the history of porcelain and master classes.
Another of the museum’s favourite topics is archaeology. A Russian-Serbian archaeological expedition has existed for several years. Hermitage and Serbian archaeologists are engaged in the study of the early history of the Slavs. The advent of the Slavs in the Balkans is an important subject nowadays. A scholarly conference as part of the Hermitage Days programme is devoted to it. It will also be held in Saint Petersburg.
Three of us gave lectures at Belgrade University. Svetlana Adaksina, the Chief Curator, and Mikhail Dedinkin, Deputy Head of the Department of Western European Art, talked about restoration and the exhibitions. I spoke from the screen about Saint Petersburg bridges of culture. In the hall of Belgrade University there is a tangible presence of Russian culture. Merezhkovsky and Gippius performed there. Igor Severianin wrote verses about the place: “In the immense hall of the university, filled with a Balkan crowd come to hear a Russian poet, I gave a concert, after exclaiming ‘Drink!’ to my soul.”
We brought some partners of ours to Belgrade. Of course, there was the Imperial Porcelain Factory, with which we work together. The Hermitage Days in Belgrade were supported by the Yakobson Ballet Theatre and the opera singer Vasily Gerello. Museums do not have their own special muse, and so we allow into the museum the patronesses of theatre, music and poetry.
There is one more area on which the museum concentrates its attention – delving into the depths of history. Here I would like to highlight the recently opened exhibition about the artistic legacy of the Old Believers. The exhibition is a provocative one. It deals with an alternative Russian spiritual history. It is an account of people who at the time of the Church Schism [in the 1650s] refused to accept the reforms proposed by Patriarch Nikon. He believed that those people were in error, did not cross themselves properly, used flawed texts… All those things need to be corrected. They refused.
There are few who remember that the Solovetsky Islands are a great example of the Old Believers’ resistance, They held out there for eight years. They had a choice – to die for their faith or to withdraw into the forests. Some took to the forests near Lake Onega. There, on the bank of the River Vyg, a Pomorian religious community arose. The Old Ritualists were people who did not drink, were hard working and knew the value of money. They had a love of books. The exhibition includes those remarkable books, including the celebrated Pomorian Answers, in which the heads of the community responded to questions about their beliefs posed by interrogators from some “investigative committee”. The Old Believers produced interesting art that arose in a certain enclosed space. It has its own way of moulding figures, a particular depiction of the eyes and selection of texts on icons. There are interesting details and a certain mindset in icons that were kept by people who lived a strict, rigid, restricted life. Particularly fame attached to the small metal icons that owners could carry with them. The finely worked copper sculpture is astonishingly beautiful.
Much has been lost, but praise be to the collectors and devotees. They assembled collections that then found their way into the Hermitage. The exhibition is a tribute to the great collector Vasily Druzhinin and his helper, the legendary Hermitage restorer Feodor Kalikin. It is a great deed by people whose names live on. We know the names of the following generations of Hermitage workers who gathered up books and icons in the northern villages. The present generation has determined what has come from where and presented it in an exhibition. At various times, and in various circumstances, the museum has saved things, making them the property of all.
The cancellation of culture took place in various historical eras. Monasteries were dispossessed. Russian tsars, too, seized their property. We are grateful to Nicholas I for creating the New Hermitage, but that Emperor had another side to him. He cruelly persecuted Old Believers, imposing Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality. That gravely affected the artistic tradition that his beloved museum has preserved.
Nicholas I was fond of knightly aesthetics and culture. He considered himself a knight and that found reflection in his collecting activities. He also made chivalrous gestures. On the eve of the Crimean War, the Russian Emperor intervened on behalf of the Orthodox in the Holy Land in their struggle against the Catholics. He strove to defend the interests of Russia and the interests of Orthodox Christianity.
We recently held an exhibition of a single item, one that people connect with the dramatic events around the establishment of the ancient state of Israel. It was found during excavations in the lands where, according to biblical tradition, the encounter between David and Goliath took place. In the context of the current situation in the Middle East, that biblical story is being mentioned in many newspaper publications. The commentators are divided, however, over who today should be considered David and who Goliath. Various peoples have lived in the Holy Land and fought over it. A complex history that must not be forgotten. Nor is the Holy Land alien to us.
This material was published in the Sankt-Peterburgskiye Vedomosti newspaper No 206 (7534) on 31 October 2023 under the heading “There is a time to concentrate”.
