The opening ceremony for two new halls of The Peter the Great Gallery, which had been created with support from Gazprom, took place today at the State Hermitage Museum.
The new part of the exhibition gives the visitors a deeper insight into the epoch of Empresses Anna Ioannovna and Elizabeth Petrovna. Among the exhibits showcased in the first hall are the items of decorative and applied arts and the paintings of the artists with no academic education which had been in demand in Russia before the Academy of Fine Arts was founded. The second hall is devoted to Asian and African motifs that were popular in the arts of that period. On display in the hall are wood carvings and porcelain items, furniture, mirrors, and jewelry boxes.
In addition, the previously opened hall devoted to the great Russian scholar Mikhail Lomonosov received new exhibits, including the spherical sundial, the micrometer of Lomonosov’s telescope that had been designed by the scholar himself, as well as the instruments and devices that had been created in the Instrumentation Chamber of the Imperial Academy of Sciences.
The exhibition halls will be open to the public starting from December 10.
“Today, we unveil new halls of The Peter the Great Gallery, which was opened and is constantly being updated with support from Gazprom. This exhibition forms an important part of the Hermitage Museum’s life, serving to preserve and shape the memory of the first Russian emperor. The new halls show how the empresses who came after Peter I were developing all the things he had invented. So much was created during their epoch, from the reign of Catherine I and throughout the reign of Catherine II; it is then that Russia took its form,” said Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director General of the State Hermitage Museum.
Background
In 2021, Gazprom and the State Hermitage Museum signed the Agreement of Intent. The document outlines the main areas of cooperation, in particular, the implementation of joint social-and-cultural projects which cover, inter alia, activities related to exhibitions, expositions, and education.
In 2022, as part of the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter I, the first halls of the permanent exhibition named “The Peter the Great Gallery” showcasing unique objects from the era of Peter I and the exposition displaying the recreated flags of the Preobrazhensky Life-Guards Regiment were open in the State Hermitage Museum with support from Gazprom.
The year 2023 saw the opening of another three halls of “The Peter the Great Gallery” that are devoted to further development of the Petrine transformations in the arts and culture of Russia during the reign of Empresses Anna Ioannovna and Elizabeth Petrovna.
A number of other joint projects are being implemented by Gazprom in cooperation with the State Hermitage Museum. For instance, the permanent exhibition titled “Porcelain Plastic Art by Inna Olevskaya” has been arranged at the General Staff Building of the State Hermitage Museum.
