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 />
a glaSS fanTaSy. ancienT glaSS<br />
from <strong>The</strong> <strong>hermiTage</strong> collecTion<br />
State Hermitage Museum<br />
12 October 2010 – 16 January 2011<br />
This was the first time the Hermitage staged an exhibition<br />
devoted entirely to glassmaking in the ancient period,<br />
which gives some idea of the richness and variety of the museum’s<br />
collection of this type of art. It included pieces that<br />
had come from the private collections of the Shuvalovs,<br />
the Stroganovs, Alexander Bobrinsky and other collectors,<br />
as well as from the Baron Stieglitz Central Higher School<br />
of Technical Drawing and the former Russian Archaeological<br />
Institute in Constantinople. Substantial additions to<br />
the Hermitage collection were acquired from the Roman<br />
collector of antiquities Giuseppe Pizzati and the Parisian<br />
antique dealer M. Sivadjan. In Russia the most significant<br />
purchases were made in the last quarter of the 19th century<br />
from such collectors as Yu. Lemme and A. Novikov.<br />
An important part of the display consisted of objects found<br />
over a period of decades during excavations of the ancient<br />
Greek city-colonies on the Northern Black Sea coast (Pantikapaion,<br />
Nymphea, Chersonesos and Olbia).<br />
<strong>The</strong> five sections of the exhibition gave visitors the opportunity<br />
to learn about all the main techniques of glassmaking<br />
used by ancient masters. <strong>The</strong> first section, which<br />
included the earliest exhibits (5th – 4th centuries B.C.),<br />
featured miniature bottles for fragrances and various<br />
pendant-amulets of multicoloured transparent glass of the<br />
type that had been made in Mesopotamia and Egypt as<br />
early as the 2nd millennium B.C. <strong>The</strong> so-called “core” technique<br />
in which these pieces were made was borrowed from<br />
the Ancient East.<br />
<strong>The</strong> second section comprised glass vessels cast in moulds<br />
and transformed into exquisite works of art by polishing,<br />
carving and ornamental painting. Here visitors were able<br />
to see a unique masterpiece – a cup made in Alexandria<br />
(Egypt) at the turn of the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C., with<br />
a tracery ornament of gold foil contained within two layers<br />
of clear glass. A separate showcase featured rings with glass<br />
insets and phalerae (Roman military decorations).<br />
<strong>The</strong> mosaic technique, which requires particular virtuosity<br />
and whose heyday was between the 1st century B.C. and<br />
the 1st century A.D., is represented in the Hermitage collection<br />
by some superb exhibits. In terms of the richness of<br />
their colour range the cups, bottles and necklaces are no<br />
inferior to pieces of agate and jasper, even surpassing them<br />
in elegance on account of the use of gold foil.<br />
<strong>The</strong> two most comprehensive sections of the exhibition reflected<br />
the most important stage in the development of ancient<br />
glassmaking, which began in the mid-1st century B.C.<br />
with the invention of the glassblowing tube. It was then<br />
that glass took on its special qualities – delicateness and<br />
transparency. In addition, masters already had the ability<br />
to give it every imaginable colour, from delicate light<br />
blues and greens to garnet-red, bright blue, cold and warm<br />
shades of green and amber-yellow. <strong>The</strong> display included<br />
fascinating examples of the work of Syrian masters, who<br />
specialized in blowing glass into a mould, a negative multipiece<br />
mould of clay or stone. This technique made it possible<br />
to create items with relief decoration and inscriptions.<br />
<strong>The</strong> cups with depictions of gods or wishes for victory were<br />
of particular interest.<br />
<strong>The</strong> last section of the exhibition included, besides glass<br />
items, ceramic vessels and pieces of bronze and silver that<br />
were similar to glass in the forms and methods used in<br />
their production. This juxtaposition gave the opportunity,<br />
on the one hand, to see common aesthetic trends in Roman<br />
applied art and, on the other hand, to appreciate the<br />
different effects that were achieved with the use of similar<br />
forms in pieces of transparent glass that let in rays of light<br />
and those made of clay or metal.<br />
<strong>The</strong> exhibition also gave an idea of utilitarian items – from<br />
toilet requisites and tableware to funeral urns, which have<br />
survived for thousands of years despite the fragility of the<br />
material.<br />
<strong>The</strong> project was dedicated to the memory of Nina Kunina,<br />
a remarkable academic archaeologist, a great specialist on<br />
the history of ancient glassmaking and curator of the State<br />
Hermitage collection of ancient glass.<br />
By Nadejda Jijina and Yelena Khodza<br />
J SociologiSTS on <strong>The</strong> exhiBiTionS<br />
<strong>The</strong> puBlic aT <strong>The</strong> paBlo picaSSo<br />
exhiBiTion Today<br />
<strong>The</strong> exhibition of the most famous of twentieth-century<br />
artists from the Musée National Picasso, Paris, has been<br />
a great success with the public. It was attended by around<br />
800,000 people, of whom 70% lived in St. Petersburg and<br />
30% came from other cities (nearly a third from Moscow).<br />
It is worth noting that not only regular museum-goers,<br />
but even those residents of St. Petersburg who had rarely<br />
or never been to the Hermitage before, decided to visit<br />
this exhibition. A considerable number of repeat visits<br />
were also recorded.<br />
In the break-up of the public, the prevalent share (89%)<br />
belonged to those with higher education (completed or<br />
not), mostly in the areas of arts (26%), humanities (26%),<br />
and exact sciences and technologies (24%). <strong>The</strong>re were<br />
many young visitors (47%), half of them students, but this<br />
percentage was not as high as that for other exhibitions<br />
of twentieth-century art. A greater part of the public were<br />
older visitors with a long and complex history of appreciating<br />
Picasso’s art, those who remembered previous exhibitions<br />
and unending arguments around the artist.<br />
temporary exhIbItIons<br />
<strong>The</strong> great majority of visitors had come specially for the<br />
exhibition; only 8% had seen it by chance. <strong>The</strong> study uncovered<br />
a multi-level structure of reasons behind the visit:<br />
from simple curiosity and attraction of Picasso’s name to<br />
the interest (including professional interest) in the collection<br />
of the Paris museum and the artist’s work.<br />
<strong>The</strong> main body of the visitors (75%) had a high opinion<br />
of the exhibition as a whole, which, together with the attendance<br />
numbers, provides evidence of its unqualified<br />
success. Among the descriptions used to convey the visitors’<br />
impressions, the most prevalent were: “emotional”,<br />
“expressive”, “absorbing”, “original”, “unexpected”, “intellectual”,<br />
“provoking”, “ironic”, and “playful”.<br />
<strong>The</strong> vast panorama of Picasso’s art uncovered by the exhibition<br />
opened a wide field for individual artistic preferences:<br />
the answers to the question “Which works did you like best?”<br />
offer a wide range of options. A considerable part of the list<br />
consisted of both well-known and frequently reproduced<br />
pieces and the works which had never been on display in<br />
Russia before. It is interesting that the list of the best-liked<br />
includes such works as Portrait of Olga in an Armchair, La Celestina,<br />
Paul as Harlequin, as well as <strong>The</strong> Kiss (1925), Cat Catching<br />
a Bird, <strong>The</strong> Bathers series, Figures on a Beach – those which<br />
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