The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT

awardS
golden Bridge award
In April 2010, the Golden Bridge Prize ceremony was held
at the Moscow residence of the Italian Ambassador. This
prize, established by the Embassy of the Republic of Italy
in the Russian Federation and the ITA Publishing House,
with support from President of Italy Giorgio Napolitano,
is awarded for contributions to the promotion of Italian-
Russian relations.
In 2010, the prize was awarded to Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director
of the State Hermitage Museum.
heavenly line priZe
In October 2010, the first winners of a new St. Petersburg
prize “The Heavenly Line” were announced in the presence
of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko.
The prize was established by the Baltic Media Group and
the Worldwide Club of Petersburgers.
The prize is awarded to the people who the citizens believe
have contributed the most to the preservation of the city’s
architectural and historic heritage.
The first winners were Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the
State Hermitage Museum, Alexander Sokurov, a film director,
and Vyacheslav Zarenkov, General Director of Etalon-
LenSpetsSMU.
order of meriT for The faTherland,
3rd degree
Awarded to Georgy Vilinbakhov, Deputy Director of the
State Hermitage Museum, Head of the Heraldic Council
under the President of the Russian Federation.
order of arTS and leTTerS
In June 2010, the Order of Arts and Letters was awarded at
the General Consulate of France. The order was awarded
to Natalia Brodskaya, staff member of the State Hermitage
Museum, for her considerable contribution to art history
and promotion of French art in Russia.
giacomo Quarenghi priZe
In November 2010, the Giacomo Quarenghi prize was
awarded in Bergamo. This international prize is a recognition
of research merit in the area of studying the work
of the great Italian architect and Italian artists whose work
was connected to Quarenghi’s.
The prize is established by the Osservatorio Quarenghi
association, founded in 1995 by the Bergamo Mayor and
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Province Office, the Region of Lombardy and the University
of Bergamo.
This year, the prize was awarded to Sergei Androsov, Head
of the Western European Art Department at the State
Hermitage.
muSeum olympuS priZe
The Museum Olympus Prize, established by the St. Petersburg
Committee for Culture and the Interdepartmental
Museum Council, was awarded in 2010 for the second
time.
The State Hermitage received the statuette of Mnemosyne,
the goddess of memory, in the “Museum for Children” category
for its programme The Past at Your Fingertips for deaf
and hard-of-hearing children.
A special prize with a winner’s diploma and a memorable
sign was awarded to the Hermitage restorers for their work
on bringing back to life a beaded panel from the Chinese
Palace in Oranienbaum.
A special prize was also awarded to Tamara Malinina’s book
The Imperial Glass Factory (State Hermitage Publishers).
vladimir poTanin chariTaBle foundaTion
granTS awarded To STaff memBerS
of The STaTe hermiTage
Since 2005, staff members of the State Hermitage have
been competing for grants from the Vladimir V. Potanin
Charitable Foundation. These grants mark key projects in
all spheres of the museum’s life.
In 2010, the system of Potanin grants underwent radical
changes. The number of recipients was reduced from
a hundred to fifty, while the overall prize fund became
larger than in the previous year. Besides the familiar prize
grants, new individual travel grants for Hermitage employees
were introduced in 2010 to fund research and study
trips in the areas of museum management, restoration and
conservation.
The competition for grants was still held in the autumn
and is in a way a summing up of the year’s work for the
museum. The travel grants were distributed twice a year.
In 2010, 25 Hermitage employees won these grants, which
were used for their work on catalogues, monographs, dissertations
and other research projects, for preparing new
permanent exhibitions, for exchanging experience in the
area of conservation techniques and legal support for
museums. The trip destinations differ widely: from New
York, Western Europe, Egypt, Turkey, China, Burma and
Laos to Khakassia. The reports written by the grant winners
show how important these awards are for the museum
research and the development of the other areas
of museum work.
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