With its doors closed for visitors, the Hermitage has gone online to continue demonstrating its collections worldwide and reach even more audience than it could do offline. Here is a regularly updated list of records of available streams and schedule of what’s coming.
All cultural establishments throughout Russia have shut down in late March due to the coronavirus. Theaters and museums started streaming their performances and tours on exhibitions live, a practice widely accepted in St. Petersburg, but only in Russian (by the way, write us a comment if you want to have links to the these streams in Russian).
The Hermitage museum, with its one of the biggest collections of European art, appealed to the international audience. It has created or is going to create online guided excursions in four languages: Italian, French, Chinese and English.
Italian was the first reflecting close ties between Russia and Italy and the Italian art collection possessed by the museum as well as the footprint of Italian architects in St. Petersburg. On March 25, on the day of Venice’s foundation, the Hermitage’s director Mikhail Pyotrovsky addressed online audience referring to the nickname of St. Petersburg as «Venice of the North». Venice is also a city where the Hermitage Italy’s headquarters is located. A series of online excursions in Italian is made as a sign of solidarity of Russians with Italians severely affected by COVID-19. «Art is a powerful tool helping the humanity to survive painful times. The history of Italia has been proving it», Pyotrovsky said.
All the online excursions shot and still to be shot are published on the museum’s Youtube channel and available free to everyone for unlimited period of time.
We publish the list of produced streams with links to them and the schedule of online excursions to be held in the near term. Visit this page regularly for further updates.
— The Winter Palace great halls enfilade tour (in English)
— The exhibition of French impressionists. Oscar-Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne (in French)
— The Winter Palace great halls enfilade tour (in Italian)
— Venice in the Venice of the North. Venice’s veduta. Luca Carlevaris, Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), Michele Marieschi, Francesco Guardi, Bernardo Bellotto (in Italian)
— The art of the Renaissance (in Italian)
— The Pazyryk culture of nomads of the Altai Mountains (in English)
— The Winter Palace great halls enfilade tour (in Chinese)
— Rosso Fiorentino. Madonna in gloria (in Russian, with Italian subtitles)
— The Winter Palace great halls enfilade tour (in Spanish)