A touch of Italian friendship

Italy’s own Friends of the Hermitage Museum association intends to focus on cultural tourism.

By Galina Stolyarova

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: July 25, 2012 (Issue # 1719)

FOR SPT Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky attends a Marilyn Monroe exhibit at Florence’s Ferragamo Museum.

The State Hermitage Museum spread its wings as far as Italy this month, with the inauguration in Florence of an Italian Association of Friends of the Hermitage Museum.

Hermitage Italy is the fifth association of its kind, following Hermitage friends’ clubs in the U.K., the Netherlands, the U.S. and Canada.

The Hermitage has been Russia’s most internationally active art gallery during the past decade. Not only does it boast international friends’ organizations, it operates several branches in some of the world’s tourist Meccas, willfully expanding its international audience. In 2000, Somerset House in London became home to the Hermitage Rooms. In the same year, the museum joined forces with the New York Guggenheim Foundation to bring more contemporary art to the Hermitage, and to hold joint exhibitions with museums around the world. One of these projects, the Hermitage Guggenheim Museum in Las Vegas, has been operating ever since. On top of that, the museum opened an exhibition center in Amsterdam as well as a branch in the Italian town of Ferrara.

Not surprisingly, some members of Friends of the Hermitage societies around the world have either Russian roots or a personal Russian connection.

The president of Friends of the Hermitage in Italy is Francesco Bigazzi, an eminent Italian foreign correspondent who spent more than 20 years covering Russia and the former Soviet Union for the weekly magazine Panorama. Bigazzi was among the first five foreign correspondents to travel to Chernobyl shortly after the nuclear disaster in 1986. Bigazzi also served as a culture and press attaché at the Italian Consulate General in St. Petersburg, before becoming the president of Viva Italia, an association promoting Italian tourism opportunities in Russia.

“The goal of the Friends of the Hermitage in Italy is to make Italians closer to one of the greatest art galleries on this planet,” Bigazzi told The St. Petersburg Times. “Museums like the Hermitage belong to the world, as they often represent the art and culture of a city or country. Therefore, a museum as great as the Hermitage should be accessible for exploration as much as possible for people far beyond Russia. It should also be an institution with many events and activities that people can be part of — even though they live abroad.”

Friends’ societies frequently help to arrange exhibitions from the Hermitage abroad.

Friends of the Hermitage in Italy will work in close alliance with the Hermitage Ferrara in organizing exhibitions, concerts, festivals and other cultural events. The association will raise funds for restoration work and the purchase of new masterpieces, organize arts conferences and promote cultural tourism.

“Cultural tourism will be one of our priorities,” Bigazzi said. “For the Hermitage Days, which we are holding from December 6 to 10, 2012, the association is organizing the first charter flight from St. Petersburg to Florence for members and friends of the association.”

Bigazzi believes that friends’ organizations help to build an objective image of St. Petersburg.

“Great art galleries like the Hermitage can ultimately act as cultural ambassadors representing the country of their origin,” he said.

FOR SPT Piotrovsky with Francesco Bigazzi (2nd r), the association’s president.

His views are shared by the Hermitage’s director Mikhail Piotrovsky, who is convinced that the museum’s international activities contribute toward building a positive image of Russia abroad. “When the Hermitage Rooms opened in London, for the first time in years the general tone of Russia-related stories in the British media was more favorable than usual,” he said.

According to Bigazzi, the Friends of the Hermitage Organization in Italy was established to carry out major projects in support of the Hermitage and its collections and to raise funds for these projects.

“Many Italians have never been to the Hermitage, but are fascinated by the visual arts and are most interested in exploring the Hermitage,” Bigazzi said. “Those who are affiliated with the world of arts and culture know how much the Hermitage deserves to be known and supported. On the whole, there is a great deal of goodwill toward this exceptional museum and the beautiful palace that it occupies.”

In 1996, the Hermitage became the first museum in Russia to organize a society for friends of the museum. The public immediately welcomed the creation of the organization.

Piotrovsky announced the decision to create a friends’ organization at a press conference in November 1996. The next day, people were knocking on the museum’s door expressing their interest in becoming members.

Although a number of Russia’s leading museums and theaters now also boast their own friends’ organizations both in Russia and abroad, the practice is still relatively new in this country.

In Western Europe, similar organizations have thousands of members, while the largest ones of their kind in Russia boast slightly fewer than 1,000 people.

The board of the Hermitage Friends in Italy includes respected business people, scholars and members of aristocratic families, such as Ferruccio Ferragamo, chairman of the Salvatore Ferragamo fashion group; Contessa Maria Vittoria Rimbotti, president of the Uffizzi Gallery Friends Association; Claudia Cremonini, head of the external relations department of the Cremonini food processing holding; professor Stefania Pavan, a senior lecturer in Russian literature at the University of Florence; and Marquise Bona Frescobaldi.

Ferragamo, who runs one of Italy’s most renowned and successful fashion companies, became the first member of the association. During a visit to Italy for the launch ceremony of the association, Piotrovsky visited the Ferragamo Museum in Florence, where he attended an exhibit dedicated to the Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe.

Admirers of the Ferragamo brand are hoping that this cooperation will result not only in arts projects, but also new collections inspired by the Hermitage’s objects of art.

The Hermitage has already collaborated with considerable success with St. Petersburg designers Tatyana Parfyonova and Ianis Chamalidy, who both received permission to study the museum’s collections, consult curators and produce new designs inspired and influenced by the Hermitage’s treasures.