The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT
The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT
The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT
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temporary exhIbItIons<br />
<strong>hermiTage</strong> • vyBorg cenTre<br />
On the basis of an Agreement on Co-operation between<br />
the Government of the Leningrad Region, the State Hermitage<br />
Museum and the Vyborg District municipal structure,<br />
the Hermitage • Vyborg Exhibition Centre opened<br />
on 16 June 2010. <strong>The</strong> Centre is located in a building<br />
that is an architectural monument – the former Museum<br />
of Fine Arts, designed by Uno Ulberg.<br />
<strong>The</strong> first exhibitions at the Centre were: Catherine the Great,<br />
devoted to the Hermitage’s founder Catherine II, and<br />
<strong>The</strong> Northern War. <strong>The</strong> Taking of Vyborg by Russian Troops in<br />
1710, marking the 300th anniversary of that event.<br />
Catherine the Great (16 June 2010 – 7 February 2011) comprised<br />
211 exhibits arranged in four sections, reflecting<br />
the Empress’s state and educational activities, as well as<br />
her personal life. A separate subject was St. Petersburg.<br />
<strong>The</strong> exhibition included painting, graphic art, sculpture,<br />
medals and jewellery.<br />
<strong>The</strong> rooms devoted to Catherine as a patron of science<br />
and art featured paintings from the collection of Catherine’s<br />
Hermitage (by Mattia Preti, Salvatore Rosa and Adolf<br />
Kaufmann), pieces from the Imperial Porcelain Factory<br />
and Glassworks and the Peterhof Lapidary Factory. <strong>The</strong> display<br />
also included portraits of her closest associates, who influenced<br />
the development of Russian science and culture,<br />
playing a significant part in the establishment of the Imperial<br />
Academy of Arts, the development of the Academy of<br />
Sciences and the formation of the Empress’s brilliant art<br />
collection: Yekaterina Dashkova, Ivan Betskoi, Ivan Shuvalov,<br />
Alexander Stroganov and Nikita Panin. <strong>The</strong> activity<br />
of French educators and Catherine’s correspondence with<br />
Voltaire were also reflected in these rooms.<br />
Numismatic exhibits, jewellery and military uniforms, as<br />
well as allegorical paintings portraying the successes of the<br />
Russian army in wars in the north and south of the country<br />
(by Heinrich Buchholz and Andreas Guney) and portraits<br />
of military leaders, cast light on Russian foreign policy<br />
in the second half of the 18th century.<br />
<strong>The</strong> third section was devoted to the history of the Empress’s<br />
accession, her family and the principal events in<br />
her private life. In these rooms one could see painted<br />
and drawn portraits of Catherine and members of her<br />
family – Emperor Peter III, Grand Duke Pavel (Paul)<br />
Petrovich, Grand Duchess Maria Fiodorovna, Grand<br />
Dukes Alexander and Konstantin. Also on display were<br />
Catherine’s uniform dresses and medals issued on the occasion<br />
of births, weddings and other events in the life<br />
of the Imperial family.<br />
<strong>The</strong> city of St. Petersburg, which became a genuine Imperial<br />
capital under Catherine, was represented by engravings<br />
(by Thomas Melton, Ludwig and Matthias Laurie,<br />
Benjamin Paterssen and Karl Beggrov), memorial medals<br />
and works of decorative applied art devoted to the creation<br />
of the famous architectural ensembles.<br />
<strong>The</strong> famous “mug with ears of corn” was specially restored<br />
for this exhibition, as were portraits of Grand Duke Peter<br />
and Grand Duchess Catherine from the collection of<br />
the Department of the History of Russian Culture (these<br />
portraits had never previously been shown). Other items<br />
put on display for the first time were: a steel medallion<br />
depicting Catherine II by A. Wiedemann and a series of<br />
medals entitled Famous Men of France in honour of French<br />
educators.<br />
Since the Centre opened it has welcomed more than<br />
11,000 visitors: from St. Petersburg, Vyborg, the Leningrad<br />
Region, from 69 other cities and regions of Russia (Moscow,<br />
Volgograd, Krasnoyarsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky,<br />
Omsk, Komsomolsk-na-Amure, Salekhard, Tyumen, Ishim,<br />
Magnitogorsk, Vladivostok and Yakutsk), and from abroad<br />
(Finland, Brazil, Germany, Israel, Spain, Britain, South<br />
Africa, China, Latvia, Ukraine, Belarus and Estonia).<br />
<strong>The</strong> centre’s staff have conducted over 200 guided tours,<br />
including some in Finnish and English.<br />
<strong>The</strong> visitors to exhibitions have included schoolchildren<br />
and students, forces personnel and pensioners, people<br />
with restricted physical abilities – members of the Korchaginets<br />
club for wheelchair invalids, and people with restricted<br />
eyesight who were able to familiarize themselves with<br />
Hermitage collections for the first time. By an agreement<br />
with the Vyborg District Education Committee around<br />
1,500 secondary school pupils have visited the Hermitage •<br />
Vyborg Centre.<br />
Vyborg Day (19 August) and Elderly Person’s Day (1 October)<br />
were open days at the Centre for war veterans and the<br />
older generation.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Centre has initiated particularly valuable mutual relations<br />
with the students and teachers of the Vyborg School<br />
of Art, which is part of the same complex of buildings.<br />
Since the Centre was constructed and opened in 2008<br />
a season of lectures on the museum collections for students<br />
of higher educational establishments in Vyborg was<br />
launched and is still continuing with the direct participation<br />
of State Hermitage research staff. In the 2010 season<br />
seven lectures were given in the series Pages from the History<br />
of Renaissance Art, some of them in the Vyborg Humanitarian<br />
Gymnasium and in the Vyborg branch of the Herzen<br />
Pedagogical University in St. Petersburg.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Centre runs a museum study group for primary and<br />
secondary schoolchildren. Just before the Christmas holidays,<br />
with the view of attracting children and their parents<br />
into the creative process, the Centre announced a competition<br />
entitled “A Christmas Card in the ‘Hermitage’<br />
Style”. Over 150 works in a variety of sizes and techniques<br />
were submitted to the jury. At a ceremony on 25 December<br />
the finalists were awarded prizes and an invitation for their<br />
families to visit the Centre.<br />
For adult visitors the Centre organized artistic events in<br />
the Art Foyer. <strong>The</strong>y included: a concert and the presentation<br />
of a new book of poetry by Valery Remeniuk, a Vyborg<br />
Opening of the Hermitage ∙ Vyborg Centre<br />
author-performer who has participated in numerous music<br />
festivals; a meeting with Doctor of History Hannu Takala,<br />
Director of the Lahti Historical Museum, who spoke about<br />
the history of former Vyborg museums; the presentation<br />
of the Monrepos almanac, marking the 250th anniversary<br />
of the famous Vyborg park-reserve. In an article entitled<br />
“Each of us is an Author of History”, Yekaterina Zuyeva,<br />
a journalist from the Vyborg newspaper, wrote the following<br />
concerning the event: “<strong>The</strong> presentation of this beautifully<br />
illustrated publication took place in the Hermitage •<br />
Vyborg Exhibition Centre, which (coincidentally) was celebrating<br />
100 days since its opening ceremony. Unexpected<br />
coincidences, little discoveries, the intersection of the<br />
cultural currents in Vyborg’s history – this is so typical of<br />
a multicultural ancient city”.<br />
Once a month the Hermitage Cinema Club in the Centre<br />
shows a historical feature film free of charge, with a preliminary<br />
introduction to the subject or other artistic phenomenon<br />
to which the film is devoted and the story of its<br />
making. <strong>The</strong> Club started its activities with a showing and<br />
discussion of Alexander Sokurov’s film <strong>The</strong> Russian Ark.<br />
A substantial number of the Centre’s foreign visitors are<br />
temporary exhIbItIons<br />
Finnish nationals, who appreciate the opening of an art<br />
centre in Vyborg as a revival of multinational (including<br />
Finnish) cultural traditions. On a commission from one<br />
of the Finnish television channels the TV presenter Lisa<br />
Hovinheimo made a documentary about the creation of<br />
an exhibition centre in the former Museum of Fine Arts<br />
as a sign of respect for Vyborg’s historic past; the film has<br />
already been shown three times in the Centre. <strong>The</strong> Centre<br />
is a regular focus of attention for the Finnish media<br />
and art museums in Finland, as confirmed by the number<br />
of proposals for joint projects at the 11th Russian-Finnish<br />
Cultural Forum, which took place in October 2010 in the<br />
Finnish town of Hameenlinna. <strong>The</strong>se included an exhibition<br />
of watercolours by Viktor Svetikhin from the South<br />
Karelia Regional Museum in the town of Lappeenranta<br />
and a possible exhibition from the collections of the<br />
former Vyborg Museum of Fine Arts (1930–1939). Various<br />
kinds of support for these undertakings are being provided<br />
by the Finnish Consulate-General in St. Petersburg, the<br />
Viipuri Centre autonomous noncommercial organization<br />
and its main partner in Helsinki – the Viipuri Keskus public<br />
organization.<br />
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