Displaying items by tag: catherine the great

Add the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, to a growing list of museums, including the Guggenheim and the Louvre, that are launching new satellites from the mother ship. Late last month, during 250th-anniversary celebrations of the Hermitage’s founding by Catherine the Great, the New York architects Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture of Asymptote Architecture signed a contract to design the Hermitage Modern Contemporary, an outpost in Moscow that will draw on the Hermitage’s rich 20th-century art collections and also display new work.

For the past few weeks, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, has been hosting a variety of special events to celebrate its 250th anniversary. Founded in 1764, with an art collection from the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, the Hermitage is one of the oldest and largest museums in the world. The institution’s sprawling collection comprises over three million objects and occupies a complex of historic buildings, including the Baroque Winter Palace, a lavish former residence of Russian emperors.

On Saturday, December 6, the Hermitage projected a colorful 3-D show onto the facade of its General Staff Building, located on St. Petersburg’s popular Palace Embankment. More than half a millions viewers visited the Hermitage to catch a glimpse of the three-hour show, “Dance of History,” which presented a historical overview of the museum.

Officials at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia announced that the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas will design a freestanding addition to the institution’s existing structure. Founded by Catherine the Great in 1764, the Hermitage is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world.

Koolhaas, a Pritzker Prize winner, has designed Portugal’s Casa de Música, the Seattle Central Library and Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands. He has worked with the Hermitage for over a decade and designed the fleeting Hermitage Guggenheim in Las Vegas in the early 2000s. Koolhaas has been working with the Hermitage’s director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, since 2008 on a rearrangement of the museum’s existing interior. That project is expected to conclude in 2014 and will coincide with the museum’s 250^th anniversary.

The Hermitage’s new building will be located outside of St. Petersburg’s historic center. Contemporary architecture is banned from the area so to preserve the unity of the city’s aesthetic. The Koolhaas-designed structure will include a library, costume museum, a publishing house and various public spaces.  

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.

On view through January 27, 2013 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgen’s is the first comprehensive exhibition to focus on the Roentgen family’s cabinetmaking firm, which operated from 1742 into the early 1800s. Extravagant Inventions presents around sixty pieces of furniture, many of which have never been seen outside of Europe.

Abraham Roentgen (1711-1793) and his son David (1743-1807) were pioneering figures in 18^th century Continental furnituremaking. Based in Germany, the Roentgen firm’s style is characterized by opulence, inventiveness (they often incorporated hidden compartments and secret drawers into their works), and ornate, finely carved shapes. The Roentgens served clients around Europe including France’s Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and Russia’s Catherine the Great.  

Extravagant Inventions brings together works from various international collections as well as six works from the Met’s own holdings. Highlights include a writing desk (circa 1758-1762) designed by Abraham Roentgen and considered one of the greatest creations from his workshop, a mechanical secretary cabinet (1779) made for King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, and a pair of marquetry portraits (1775-1780) depicting a man and a woman, which exemplifies the marquetry technique the Roentgens were renowned for.