Press Tour of the Construction Site of the Hermitage–Urals Centre

On 13 March 2019. a press tour was held in Yekaterinburg devoted to the Restoration and Storage Block of the Hermitage–Urals cultural and educational centre that is currently under construction.

The site was presented by Alexei Valentinovich Bogdanov, Deputy General Director of the State Hermitage, Vladimir Yevseyevich Kaganovich, creator of the architectural design for the Hermitage–Urals Centre, and Nikita Nikolayevich Korytin, Director of the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts.

The premises of the block already built at 16, Vainer Street with a total floor area of 2,632 square metres contain the repository of the Yekaterinburg Museum, restoration workshops, rooms for unpacking and acclimatizing paintings, a photographic studio and a research library. The main premises of the Hermitage–Urals Centre, though, will be the historical building at 11, Vainer Street that was constructed in 1912 to the design of the architect Konstantin Trofimovich Babykin. It was there, in 1936, that the first displays of the newly-created Sverdlovsk Picture Gallery (from 1988, the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts) were housed. It was also used during the Second World War to store the collections of the State Hermitage evacuated from Leningrad. The building will be adapted to modern usage with a special extension accommodating all the necessary museum infrastructure. The rooms in which members of the Hermitage staff worked in evacuation will be preserved as a memorial.

The concept for the creation and functioning of the Hermitage–Urals Centre envisages the holding of exhibitions, lectures, conferences, scholarly gatherings and museum educational programmes. The inauguration of the Centre, planned for April 2020, will be a significant cultural event both for the city of Yekaterinburg and for Sverdlovsk region as a whole.