Planet Hermitage

“Hermitage – what could be added to this word? We haven’t got anything of greater importance. It is an ark, on which one can be saved if things get really bad. If there were no Hermitage, everything would lose meaning. “

Alexander Sokurov, director of the semi-fictional film, Russian Ark, shot in the Hermitage.

“For me, the Hermitage is a musical, polyphonic phenomenon. When I come to the Hermitage these days, after a tour, between rehearsals, to distract my mind from the inevitable fuss and creative fever, I am carried away by its aura. 

I am a musician, and the associations I have when I visit the Hermitage are melodic. Rembrandt evokes 

in me something of Beethoven, Italian Skylight Halls – Vivaldi. As for the Hermitage as a whole, for 

me it is associated with the bright genius of Mozart.”

Valery Gergiev, artistic director of 

the Mariinsky Theatre 

Two hundred and forty years ago, Catherine the Great purchased a large collection of European art, laying the foundation for what today is the Hermitage museum.
On the occasion of this important anniversary, we turned to our Hermitage expert in St. Petersburg, Polina Fomina.
We had just one question: What is the Hermitage?

She had several answers...

The Hermitage is like a planet. Planet Hermitage has six buildings along the banks of the Neva river, a huge storehouse on the outskirts of the city, a restaurant, an internet café, a jazz radio station, three foreign affiliates, its own symphony orchestra, restorers’ laboratories, a porcelain factory, several thousand employees, a hundred cats on staff (see Russian Life March/April 2003), a publishing house, educational centers and three million objects of art covering human culture from Antiquity to the Present.

The Hermitage is our Everything. The writer Viktor Shklovsky once wrote: “A man does not live on what he eats, but on what he digests. Art is needed as a ferment.”

The Hermitage has proven capable of “digesting” just about anything that Russia can dish out. Even Coke, which produced a “Petersburgian” can depicting the Hermitage, in honor of the city’s tercentennial. Even those who prefer Pepsi to Coke bought the cans, because when you say “Hermitage,” you mean “Heritage.”

Even Siberian schoolboys know that the Hermitage stretches for many kilometers, that it cannot be walked through in three days, that it has the world’s best collection of Impressionist paintings, its largest collection of Rembrants, and even a few masterpieces by Leonardo Da Vinci.

When Petersburg’s Scandinavian neighbors decided to open an IKEA furniture megastore in the city, they turned to the Hermitage to help them with their marketing. Their TV commercial shows visitors to the Hermitage queuing up in an endless line, sitting in IKEA chairs. The furniture maker cannot get people tickets to the museum, the ad says, but at least they can wait in comfort.

The Hermitage is Petersburg. In the metro, a young woman explains to someone at the other end of her cellphone: “I am going to the city.” “The city” means downtown. “Downtown” is Palace Square, which means the Hermitage.

Legend has it that there are secret passageways under Palace Square, leading to dominions unknown... Exploiting this gossip, the Hermitage claimed ownership of the entire square... and keeps expanding. The expansion is carried out in the best traditions of the Guggenheim Museum, the Hermitage’s soulmate.

The project known as “The Great Hermitage” foresees encompassing the entirety of Palace Square and the buildings attached to it into one huge museum and entertainment complex under the Hermitage brand name. At present, just half the buildings on Palace Square belong to the Hermitage. But time only moves in one direction...

Meanwhile, the Hermitage is building affiliates all over the world. Europe and America have already been assimilated. The first western affiliate was opened in Somerset House, London, courtesy of a multimillion dollar donation from Lord Rothschild. It allowed “for the recreation in miniature of the imperial splendor of the Winter Palace and its various wings.” Next came Las Vegas and Amsterdam, each with a different agenda. The Hermitage brought along the sumptuous women of Rubens for its opening in the modern world’s Capital of Excess. Amsterdam, known for its lax morality, got an exhibition of erotic art.

Even while negotiations to open affiliates in Italy and Japan are underway, the Hermitage is assimilating the Russian part of Asia. In 1825, Tsar Nicholas I sentenced the Decembrists – aristocratic youths who rebelled against his monarchical rule – to hard labor and internal exile in Siberia. The men’s beautiful and aristocratic wives followed them into exile, and together they brought a taste of European culture to the wastelands of Siberia. Now, as part of its program, “Hermitage in Siberia,” the museum’s collections will travel one by one into temporary exile to Siberia’s prominent museums. In turn, the East will send its most unique treasures to the Hermitage.

The Hermitage’s 2001 excavations in the Republic of Tuva had sensational results. In the village of Arzhan, where wonderful things had already been found three decades before, a new Scythian burial mound was unearthed by accident, as a roadway was being laid. The discovery can truly be compared to the discovery of Tutankamen’s tomb. It had been decades since such a rich and ancient find had been recorded. The skillful hands of Hermitage restorers reanimated the glitter of the ancient gold – over 20 kilos. The Hermitage is always sensational.

The Hermitage is an achievement. The average Hermitage worker’s salary is 5000 rubles (about $150) a month. That is for a full eight hours a day, five days a week of work. The Hermitage is open every day except Mondays, January 1 and May 9 (Victory Day).

The Hermitage receives between two and two-and-a-half million visitors each year. Its annual budget is over 1 billion rubles ($33 million). R647 million comes from the state, R433 million is earned by the museum through its various activities.

The Hermitage’s director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, replaced his father, Boris Piotrovsky, who had headed the museum complex for 26 years. To keep on top of the museum’s burgeoning activities, Piotrovsky the Younger works every day of the year. “They see us only as an exhibition factory,” he said, “but that is only a tiny part of the work...”

Piotrovsky has in fact become a living symbol of the museum. So where does this author of over 200 scientific articles spend time when he wanders the halls of his museum? If he has 20 minutes free in the morning, he said, he may take a stroll among the Venetian paintings, then visit his favorite section: Islamic art. The Hermitage’s collection of Islamic art is not large, but it includes masterpieces found in any book on Islamic culture.

Interestingly, it was art from the East that prevented certain Hermitage’s treasures from being sold abroad. In the 1920s, academician Iosif Orbeli wrote to Stalin, bemoaning the sale of art from the museum’s Oriental Department. Stalin sent a note back, prohibiting the further sale of art from that department. So museum staff started assigning art of uncertain origin to the Oriental Department – to save it from being exported. For instance, there was a dispute over a certain Byzantine diptych. Those who wanted to sell it claimed it was western. The Oriental Department won the argument: on the shields of warriors depicted on the diptych, there were imitations of Arabic inscriptions.

The Hermitage is the best in everything. Someone who does not take oneself too seriously is always worthy of respect.

In early 2004, the Hermitage hosted the popular Video Art Festival. All the best in video art came to the Hermitage, including American masters Bill Viola and Shirin Neshat. The work of Neshat, an Iranian-American artist, attracted the most attention. In a darkened room, two screens faced each other and visitors walked between them. On one screen, a man in a white shirt sang a song based on a 13th century Islamic poem. When he fell silent, a woman in black, on the opposite screen, began singing a song to her own verses. Visitors entered and left, and the man and the woman debated about love and friendship across the room, across the centuries. Everyone was happy... except for the Hermitage pranksters. At some point, someone grew tired of the man’s song and shut him up, so as to hear only the lady in black. When the curator arrived, he witnessed a scandalous victory for Muslim feminism.

And then there are the cats (see Russian Life March/April 2003). What other museum would have cats on staff? The human staff members make regular donations toward the health care and nutrition of the felines. The cats protect the collections from vermin. For their tenacious efforts, the cats were honored with an exhibition (opened by Piotrovsky) in the basement, where they live. Portraits of the whiskered staff were hung on pipes, and the flattered models sat nearby, purring contentedly.

The Hermitage is a little corner of solitude. In French, Hermitage (ermitage) means “a hermit’s residence” or a “solitary place.” But a place serviced by thousands of staff and stormed daily by hordes of tourists could hardly be called a place of solitude. At the beginning, of course, there were many fewer people. In the middle of the 18th century, Catherine II, the enlightened German princess who seized the Russian throne, bought a collection of paintings from a nobleman. Catherine explained to her adopted subjects that these 200 paintings were a collection and should be hung in a special place, to be admired in solitude, with comrades-in-arms or lovers. Catherine had a number of secluded nooks (ermitages were build in suburban residences and grand city palaces alike) – the tsarina used them to meet with her favorites under the cover of art. Only one of these places entered history.

I was born almost two centuries after Catherine. I studied at a high school attached to the Russian Museum, but preferred to spend my time at the Hermitage. When we were cutting classes, we would seek solitude here. In a destitute, post-perestroika Piter, we would escape from algebra lessons to the third floor of the Hermitage. There, with our backs to the radiator and facing Picasso, we discussed first love.

Catherine smiled.  RL