Museums of Russia: Hermitage-Ural Cultural and Educational Centre opened in Yekaterinburg

The opening of the Hermitage-Ural Cultural and Educational Centre took place in Yekaterinburg. The original plan included the launch of the Centre in November 2020. Due to the pandemic, the opening ceremony was postponed.

The Hermitage-Ural occupies two buildings on Weiner Street: first one houses an exposition, the second - a repository, restoration workshops, halls for lectures and meetings. In June, about 80 works by French artists and sculptors from the collections of the State Hermitage Museum arrived at the city. The exposition includes paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Auguste Renoir. The ground floor features 22 sculptures, 42 paintings by artists of the first half of the XIX century and 12 works of impressionists and post-impressionists.

Yekaterinburg plays a significant role in the history of the State Hermitage Museum. In July 1941, 1.118 million exhibits from the museum collection were evacuated from Leningrad to the Urals in two echelons. During the Great Patriotic War, they were stored in the building of the Sverdlovsk Picture Gallery. In October 1945, the values returned to Leningrad, and in 1947, Sverdlovsk received more than 200 rescued items as gratitude for the preservation of the collection.