Canadian Friends of the Hermitage

It has also made a significant contribution to ensuring the preservation of the museum collections. Initially, the Canadian Friends took on the complicated task of ensuring the safety and preservation of the State Hermitage Museum collections. The first project was the installation of protective film coating on the windows in all exhibition halls of the museum (The Hermitage Windows, 1998–2000). In 2000, the State Hermitage Museum Foundation of Canada established the volunteer, education and membership arm called Canadian Friends of the Hermitage, which seeks to develop educational programs for children, lectures and seminars in Canadian schools and universities, as well as exchange programs for Canadian and Russian students. The next joint project carried out under the motto “To preserve the past, enrich the present and inspire the future!” was the Collection Inventory Project (2000–2009). Under this project, the Hermitage was granted computers and software to develop a custom automated collection registry system for its collections and put them all into a new database, and the Foundation has provided long-term financial support for this work.

Under the motto To tell Canadians about the Hermitage and the Hermitage – about Canada, the Foundation actively supported such exhibitions as Rubens and His Age (2001), Voyage to the Myth: French Painting from Gauguin to Matisse (2002–2003), Catherine the Great: Art for Empire (2005) – in Canada, and Tom Thomson (2004), and Riopelle: A Canadian Artist (2006) – in the State Hermitage Museum.

In 2010, the Foundation participated in the publication of the English version of the album Masterpieces of European Jewelry of the 16th – 19th centuries. In 2009, the program Young Artists was launched, aimed to support the training of young Canadian artists. The program provides students of Canadian art colleges the opportunity to participate in the educational program of the State Hermitage Museum’s Youth Centre in St. Petersburg, Art Semester in the Hermitage.