The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT

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