In March 2020, a week after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam severed ties with the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
Annabelle Burney, director of the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam, said in an interview that the decision was a “moral” one. But this has had a substantial impact on the museum, which was established in 2009 as a kind of satellite of the Russian institution.
Without its connection to St. Petersburg, Amsterdam’s Hermitage was adrift with no identity and no art to display. It needed to quickly reform itself or simply close the door.
At a press conference in Amsterdam on Monday, alongside museum directors and diplomats from around the world, Barney announced that the museum would make a fresh start with a new name and a new group of collaborators.
From September 1, the name will be changed to H’Art Museum, and the exhibition will be held in partnership with three international museums: the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC. Pompidou Center in Paris. and the British Museum in London.
“We’re going to be a museum for museums,” Barney said. “Having three partners gives her so much more than just one.”
Mr. Barney said in a call Friday that he plans to sign individual agreements with each partner institution to receive art financing and share information, curatorial and educational resources. Sometimes H’Art rents entire exhibitions and adapts them for Dutch audiences. We may also develop new shows using art from our partners’ collections. Barney said the financial arrangements have not yet been settled, but cooperation agreements have already been signed.
Pompidou has agreed to collaborate with Earl on five exhibitions over five years, beginning with the exhibition of works by Wassily Kandinsky from the Musée de France collection in 2024. The partnership is well-timed for the French Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum will close in 2025 for renovations and is expected to remain closed for about five years.
“I am delighted to join the Earl Museum as this new chapter begins,” said Laurent Le Bon, president of the Pompidou Museum, in an emailed statement. Dutch cultural institution and Center Pompidou. “
Mr Barney said the Smithsonian Institution and the British Museum, in collaboration with curators at the Harart Museum, will each present three exhibitions over the next six years, with a full schedule for the next few years coming in the fall. It will be announced, he added.
The Amsterdam Hermitage Museum was founded in 2009 as an independent non-profit organization by a private board of directors, with its own artistic direction finances and curators. A deal with the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg gave the Amsterdam Museum the right to use the Hermitage name and an “unrestricted right” to borrow works from Russian collections.
In the 14 years since its opening, the Hermitage Amsterdam has hosted 30 exhibitions using artworks on loan from the St. Petersburg mothership. Among them are the French Post-Impressionists and the important French exhibition. Paintings of old Flemish masters.
About a third of the exhibitions were related to Russian culture and history, such as the Hermitage Museum founder Catherine II and “Jewelry!”. The brilliance of the Russian court. “
According to Mr. Barney, while Russia was bombing Ukraine, such imperial extravaganza did not seem very appealing to the public. “I think the Russian magic died with the war,” she added.
The final collaboration between the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, “Russian Avant-garde: A Revolution in Art,” was scheduled to run for a year, but was closed after five weeks as the museum severed its ties with Russia. . Barney said the museum lost about $2 million from the early closure.
“We felt this was the only right thing to do,” Mr. Barney said. “We had to accept the outcome, but we proudly kept our decision. Time proved us right as the situation in Ukraine developed. .”
In the months since ties with Amsterdam’s Hermitage were severed, Dutch museums stepped in to help the museum survive, temporarily loaning some of the star’s works as a sign of unity. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam exhibited “The Milkmaid” by Johannes Vermeer. Van Gogh Museum, Vincent van Gogh’s “Yellow House”. And Boijmans van Beuningen’s Brueghel’s “The Tower of Babel”. The museum has also raised nearly $1 million through a crowdfunding campaign.
In February, “Rembrandt and His Contemporaries: Historical Paintings from the Leiden Collection” opened at the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam, where it is still on display. The exhibition brings together 35 works of art from the private collection of Dutch master paintings owned by American billionaire Thomas Kaplan.
Kaplan also plans to loan the Dutch master to the Har Museum again on a large scale for an exhibition in 2025, which will include 17 of his Rembrandt paintings. He said he was enthusiastic about the museum’s choice to partner with the Smithsonian Institution, the Pompidou Museum and the British Museum.
“Collaborations with these great museums would ‘act as magnets for other great collaborations,'” he said.
“Success creates a desire for others to participate,” says Kaplan. “Thus, the museum will not only break its origin story with Russia, but from there will emerge an even more important force than ever before,” he added.
