Displaying items by tag: hermitage museum

The State Hermitage Museum signed a protocol of intent on Wednesday, March 11, with the St. Petersburg-based LSR development group to open a satellite branch of the museum in Moscow, on the grounds of the landmark former Soviet ZIL automobile plant.

According to a statement released by the museum: “the program of exhibitions of contemporary art will be seen by the Hermitage as a priority and will be part of the overall Hermitage 20/21 project and development of the concept of the ‘Greater Hermitage’.” The museum added that it “reserves the right to realize exhibition projects in collaboration with other museums.”

An employee at Russia's Hermitage Museum was arrested for stealing books and documents, some centuries-old, from the institution's celebrated collection and then trying to sell them to antique dealers, officials said Monday.

The man, who worked in the library of the Saint Petersburg museum, was taken into custody Friday in connection with a probe launched after items were found missing during an inspection last month, Russia's secret service FSB said in a statement.

The expansive collection of Russia's Hermitage Museum just got a little bit bigger: Helen Drutt English, the pioneering collector and dealer of American modern and contemporary craft, known in the art world as Helen Drutt, has donated to the Hermitage a collection of 74 works, including ceramics, furniture and jewelry, worth approximately $2 million, reports the "Moscow Times."

The gift coincides with the St. Petersburg institution's 250th anniversary, and is intended to help foster the relationship between Russia and the US.

A selection of oil paintings from Russia’s Hermitage Museum will be on view at Houghton Hall in England from May 17, 2013 through September 29, 2013. Great Britain’s first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, assembled the collection during the first half of the 18^th century and built Houghton Hall to house the works. Paintings from Russian and American collections will complement the works, which are returning to England for the first time in 230 years.

Walpole built Houghton Hall, which now belongs to Lord Cholmondeley, one of his direct descendants, between 1722 and 1735. In 1779,When Walpole’s grandson was in need of money, he sold the majority of his grandfather’s collection to Catherine the Great for nearly $61,500. Approximately 75 of the sold works are returning to Houghton Hall for the exhibition including paintings by Rembrandt (1606-1669), Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), and Diego Velázquez (1599-1660).

While a handful of the paintings have been on view in England since their sale in the 18^th century, none of them have returned to Houghton Hall. Designed by the foremost architects of Walpole’s time, James Gibbs and Colen Campbell, Houghton Hall’s lavish interior was decorated by the eminent architect and furniture designer William Kent. Walpole spared no expense and Houghton Hall remains as one of the finest examples of Palladian architecture in England.

The Pushkin Art Museum in Moscow and the renowned Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg engaged in a public dispute on Tuesday, April 30, 2013 after Irina Antonova, the director of the Pushkin, asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to consider reopening the State Museum of New Western Art and restoring its original collection. The State Museum once housed the impressionist and early modern art collection of Russian art collectors, Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov, but it was closed in 1948 under Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship for straying too far from Soviet art. The Museum of New Western Art’s collection was later divided between the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage Museum.

Officials at the Hermitage voiced their opposition to Antonova’s query as the museum could see some of its most prized artworks relocated to Moscow if the plan was approved. Antonova fired back by saying that the revival of the museum was a matter of historic fairness since the Soviet state was responsible for the museum’s downfall.

Morozov and Schukin’s private collection, which includes works by Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and Edgar Degas (1834-1917), was nationalized after the Russian revolution and used to form the core of the Museum of New Western Art’s holdings in 1912. After the museum closed, the collection was divided up under an agreement between the directors of the Pushkin and the Hermitage. For the Hermitage, the paintings were compensation for the hundred of old master works that were taken from Saint Petersburg to Moscow in the 1920s by Soviet officials when the Pushkin Museum was undergoing an expansion.

Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum is gearing up to re-open to the public after closing earlier this year for renovations. Masterpieces such as Sunflowers, The Bedroom, Irises, and The Potato Eaters were returned to the museum on Friday, April 26, 2013 after seven months on view at the Hermitage Museum. The museum is slated to re-open on May 1, 2013 with the exhibition Van Gogh at Work inaugurating the newly updated space.

Updates to the Van Gogh Museum began in 2010 after intensification in fire safety regulations. Most of the recent refurbishments centered on the replacement of the museum’s air conditioning installations. The museum is now equipped with a modern and sustainable air conditioning unit that allows the right climatic conditions to be set for each room. The structure’s roof was also replaced and outfitted with extra insulation, the floors have been replaced, and the walls are newly repainted.

The Van Gogh Museum, which opened in 1973, houses the largest collection of Vincent van Gogh’s (1853-1890) paintings and drawings in the world. Van Gogh at Work will coincide with the 160^th anniversary of the artist’s birth and offers an extensive overview of Van Gogh’s oeuvre. The exhibition will be on view through January 12, 2014.

After closing earlier this year for renovations, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam announced that it will re-open on May 1, 2013. The exhibition Van Gogh at Work will inaugurate the newly updated space. The Van Gogh Museum’s collection was relocated to Amsterdam’s Hermitage Museum during the closure; the works will remain on view there through April 25, 2013.

Updates to the Van Gogh Museum began in 2010 after intensification in fire safety regulations. Most of the recent refurbishments centered on the replacement of the museum’s air conditioning installations. The museum is now equipped with a modern and sustainable air condition unit that allows the right climatic conditions to be set for each room. The structure’s roof was also replaced and outfitted with extra insulation, the floors have been replaced, and the walls are newly repainted.

The Van Gogh Museum, which opened in 1973, houses the largest collection of Vincent van Gogh’s (1853-1890) paintings and drawings in the world. Van Gogh at Work will coincide with the 160^th anniversary of the artist’s birth and offers an extensive overview of Van Gogh’s oeuvre. The exhibition will be on view through January 12, 2014.

A new exhibition sponsored by BP will bring over 70 masterpieces back to the UK after 234 years. The paintings, which originally hung at Houghton Hall in Norfolk, England during the 1720s, were part of Britain’s first Prime Minister Robert Walpole’s collection. The exhibition includes works by Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1591-1644) and Rembrandt (1606-1669), which will hang in their original positions in Houghton Hall.

The show opens on May 17, 2013 and has been met with some criticism. Many of the works on view are on loan from the Hermitage Museum and other Russian institutions as well as the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Critics feel that BP’s involvement is meant to benefit its relationship with Russia and that the company chooses its sponsorship events based on business rather than its interest in the art.

After Walpole’s death, his illustrious collection was sold to Russia for $61,355 and was sent from Britain 1779. Houghton Hall is currently owned by Walpole’s descendants and contains the furniture, bronzes, and antiquities that once belonged to the former Prime Minister.

165 years ago, the Knoedler Gallery opened its doors in New York and went on to help create some of the country’s most celebrated collections including those of Paul Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, and Robert Sterling Clark. Throughout the years, top-notch works by artists such as van Gogh, Manet, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Louise Bourgeois, and Willem de Kooning passed through the gallery. When the Soviet government sold hundreds of paintings from the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad in the 1930s, they chose to work with Knoedler to sell paintings by masters like Rembrandt, Raphael, and Velazquez.

Knoedler’s exemplary past is often forgotten as the gallery’s present has been mired in lawsuits and accusations that the company’s former president, Ann Freedman, was in the business of selling fakes. Last year, Knoedler Gallery closed its doors for good.

This week, Los Angeles’ Getty Research Institute announced that it had bought the Knoedler Gallery archive. Spanning from around 1850 to 1971, the archive includes stock books, sales books, a photo archive and files of correspondence, including letters from artists and collectors, some with illustrations. The Getty was interested in Knoedler’s archive because it offers an expansive glimpse into the history of collecting and the art market in the United States and Europe from the mid-19^th century to modern times.

The archive was purchased from Knoedler’s owner, Michael Hammer, for an undisclosed amount. Meticulously preserved, the archive will be available to scholars and digitized for online research after the Getty catalogues and conserves it all.