Museums
Introduction
Art plays an important role in the life of a man and sometimes it is
next to impossible to live without it. It is natural that the first thing
that comes to my mind at the mention of the word ‘art’ is museums.
A museum is a stock of the world’s masterpieces, it is the place, where
you can enrich knowledge, you can look at the achievements of mankind, you
can satisfy your aesthetic taste. Museums give the possibility to be always
in touch with the past and every time discover something new for yourself.
Besides, museums play an important role in the life of any nation. A museum
is just the right place to find out lots of interesting things about
history, traditions and habits of different peoples. One may find in
museums papers, photos, books, scripts, works of art, personal things of
famous people etc. All this helps us to better understand historical
events, scientific discoveries, character and deeds of well-known
personalities.
I think museums somehow effect the formation of personality, his
outlook. Every educated person is sure to understand the great significance
of museums in our life, especially nowadays, when after the humdrum of
everyday life you may go to your favourite museum, relax there with your
body and soul and acquire inner harmony and balance.
I am a regular museum-goer. In fact I visited no less than 20 museums.
Among them: the Louver, the National Gallery, the Shakespeare House in
Stratford-on Avon, the Oxford story exhibition, Museum of Reading, Madam
Tussaud’s Exhibition ,the Tretyakov Gallery and others. We can hardly find
a town in our country without its «Fine Arts» Museum. I’ve been in
Voronezh, Kislovodsk, Essentuky and some other regional museums.
Now I want to write about the Tretyakov Gallery, Windsor Castle,
Westminster Abbey, Buckinngham Palace and Hermitage, about their history
and their collections.
The Hermitage
The State Hermitage in St. Petersburg ranks among the world’s most
outstanding art museums. It is the largest museum in Russia: nowadays its
vast and varied collections take up four buildings; its rooms if stretched
in one line would measure many miles in total length, while they cover an
area of 94240 square meters. Over 300 rooms are open to the public and
contain a rich selection from the museum’s collections numbering about
2500000 items. The earliest exhibits Date from 500000-300000B.C., the
latest are modern works.
The collections possessed by the museum are distributed among its seven
departments and form over forty permanent exhibitions. A common feature,
characterising these exhibitions is the arrangement of items (all of them
originals) according to countries and schools in a strictly chronological
order, with a view to illustrating almost every stage of human culture and
every great art epoch from the prehistoric times to the 20th century.
Fabulous treasures are gathered in the Museum. It contains a rare
collection of specimens of Soythian culture and art; objects of great
aesthetic and historical value found in the burial mounds of the Altai; a
most complete representation of exhibits characterising Russian culture and
art. The Oriental collections of the Museum, ranking among the richest in
the world, give an idea of the culture and art of the people of the Near
and the Far East; India, China, Byzantium and Iran, are best represented;
remarkable materials illustrative of the culture and art of the peoples
inhabiting the Caucasus and Central Asia, also from part of the collections
of the Department. The Museum numbers among its treasures monuments of
ancient Greece and Rome and those from the Greek settlements on the North
coast of the Black Sea.
World famous is the collection of West-European paintings, covering a
span of about seven hundred years, from the 13th to the 20th century, and
comprising works by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, El Greco,
Velazquez, Murillo; outstanding paintings by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Rubens; a
remarkable group of French eighteenth century canvases, and Impressionist
and Post Impressionist paintings. The collection illustrates the art of
Italy, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, Britain, Sweden, Denmark,
Finland and some other countries. The West European Department of the
Museum also includes a fine collection of European sculpture, containing
works by Michelangelo, Canova, Falkonet, Houdon, Rodin and many other
eminent masters; a marvellous collection of prints and drawings, numbering
about 600 000 items; arms and armour; one of the world most outstanding
collections of applied art, rich in tapestries, furniture, lace, ivories,
porcelain metalwork, bronzes, silver, jewellery and enamels. An important
part among the museum possessions is taken by the numismatic collection,
which numbers over 1 000 000 items and is regarded as one of the largest in
the world. A permanent exhibition of coins, orders and medals is open on
the 2nd floor, rooms 398-400. There are auxiliary displays of coins forming
part of exhibitions in other departments as well. A temporary exhibition of
West-European medals is on view in the Raphael Loggias (1st floor, room
227).
The seven departments of the museum, i.e. the Department of Russian
Culture, Primitive culture, Culture and Art of the peoples of the Soviet
East, Culture and Art of the Foreign Countries of the East, Culture and Art
of the Antique World, West-European Art, Numismatics, together with the
Education Department, the Conservation Department and the Library determine
the administrative and academic structure of the museum.
Within the past few decades the Hermitage has become one of the
country’s most important centres of art study with a research staff of
about 200 historians carrying out a vast program of research on art
problems, and responsible for the preservation of the museum treasures,
their conservation and restoration, and also for the scientific
popularisation of art. The results of this varied work are published in the
form of books, articles, periodicals, pamphlets, etc.
Since 1949 a post-graduate school has been functioning at the
Hermitage, specialists in art working here at their theses.
An important aspect of the Museum’s research activities is the work of
the annual archaeological expeditions organised by the Museum either
independently or in co-operation with other Soviet scientific
institutions. The most notable among them are: the Kazmir-Blur expedition
making excavations of the city of Taishebaini dating from the 7th century
B.C and situated on the Kazmir-Blur hill near Erevan; the Chersonese and
Nymphaeum expeditions working on the sites of the ancient Greek towns
in the Crimea, the Tadjik, Altai, Pskov and some other expeditions.The
material discovered by them is of exceptional value, for not only does it
throw fresh light on the problems of the history of the art and
culture, but it also serves to enrich the Hermitage collections.
Most helpful in the Museum’s research work is the Hermitage Library
which contains about 400 000 books, pamphlets, periodicals, and is one
of the largest among the art libraries in Russia. It was started in the
18th century and contains works on all branches of fine and applied arts.
In addition to the Central Library each Department has at its disposal
a subsidiary library of special literature. Of these, the library of the
Hermitage exchanges books with a number of Russian and foreign
museums. It is open to every student of art.
All these are but a few aspects of the varied work carried out by the
Museum and constantly achieving still greater scope and a few forms,
meeting the growing cultural demands of the Russian people.
THE MAKING OF THE COLLECTION
Although visited now by thousands of people the Museum
traditionally retains the old name of the Hermitage attached to it in the
1760’s and meaning «a hermit’s dwelling», or «a solitary place». The name
is due to the fact that the Hermitage was founded as a palace museum
accessible only to the nearest of the near to the court.
A number of objects of which but a small part was later incorporated in the
museum’s collections were acquired in different countries by Peter I. These
were antique statues Marine landscapes, land a collection of Siberian
ancient gold buckles. However, the foundation of the Hermitage is usually
dated to the year 1764 when a collection of 225 pictures was bought by
Catherine II from the Prussian merchant Gotzkowsky.
A feature characteristic of the 18th century accusations was the purchase
of large groups of paintings, sometimes of complete galleries, bought
en blok at the sales in Western Europe.Count Bruhl’s collection
acquired in Dresden in 1769, the Gallery of Crozat, bought in Paris in
1772 and the gallery of Lord Walpole acquired in London in 1779 were
the most prominent among the acquisitions made in the 18th century.
Together with numerous purchases of individual pictures, they supplied
the museum with most outstanding canvases of the European school
,including those by Rembraandt,Rubens,Van Dyck and other eminent
artists, and made the Hermitage rank among the finest art galleries of
Europe. Works , commissioned by the Russian court from European painters
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