Hermitage Cats Save the Day

For centuries, cats have been protecting the State Hermitage Museum’s most valuable assets — its artwork.

By Olga Kalashnikova

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: April 3, 2013 (Issue # 1753)

for spt The cats who patrol the museum are celebrated annually by both museum staff and visitors alike.

It is a little known fact outside St. Petersburg that a whole army of cats has been protecting the unique exhibits at the State Hermitage Museum since the early 18th century. The cats’ chief enemies are the rodents that can do more harm to the museum’s holdings than even the most determined human vandal.

For the past 15 years, workers at the Hermitage have set aside a special day each year to honor the museum’s four-legged sentinels. Three years ago, that private celebration was made public and has attracted attention to the plight of both the museum’s holdings as well as its furry inhabitants.

Known as The Day of the Hermitage Cat, this year’s event will take place Saturday.

“We are holding a competition among students from local schools this year,” said Maria Haltunen, assistant to the museum’s director and the closest thing the cats have to a union spokesperson. “We have asked the children to depict how they imagine a real Hermitage cat.”

The ten best works will then be presented for a week in the Jordan Gallery, one of the ground-floor galleries visitors pass on their way to the main staircase.

“Special wall labels will be made for these pictures, labels that are identical to those that hang next to the museum’s greatest masterpieces,” said Haltunen. “They are bilingual, made from the same material and use the same type of text.”

“The children will then be given these wall labels as presents. The works by other children will be hung in the cellars — in the kingdom of the Hermitage cats,” she said.

Every year the museum tries to find new ways to engage museum visitors with the history of the cats.

The first cat was brought to the Hermitage from the Netherlands by Peter the Great as a mouser. His daughter Elizabeth continued her father’s initiative. And it was on her decree that a carriage full of cats with good hunting skills was delivered to the court from the city of Kazan in 1745. In her turn, Catherine the Great established the feline corps as the official guards of the picture galleries.

Since then the cats have been in constant residence at the museum, patrolling the underground areas — the so-called cat cellar — and preventing rodents from entering the museum. Staff at the museum believe that the mere presence of the cats is the single best safeguard against mice invading the Hermitage galleries and doing untold damage.

After centuries of this unrecognized service to some of the world’s greatest art, appreciative museum workers decided to mount a small private exhibition devoted to their unpaid colleagues in 1998. They were unprepared for the response, however, when word of the show got out a few years ago, quickly discovering that interest in the cats extended far beyond the museum walls.

FOR SPT A rare poster by Theophile Steinlen.

As a result the Day of the Hermitage Cat was officially entered into the calendar of museum exhibitions in 2010.

For his part, the museum’s director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, calls the cats “the spirit of the place; the museum’s genius loci,” said Haltunen.

During this year’s Day of the Hermitage Cat, the youngest of the museum’s visitors will be given the chance to decorate cat-shaped pieces of wood. Older children will be invited to play a strategy game that involves breaking a code, with each clue they uncover leading them toward a special exhibit.

According to long-standing tradition, exhibits from the museum’s storerooms that are not normally on view in the museum galleries are presented at the exhibition each year. Last year it was the museum’s only mummified cat.

This time around visitors will be given a glimpse of two posters by Théophil Steinlen, a French painter and printmaker from the turn of the last century, who is famous for his work for the Chat Noir cabaret in Paris.

Another novelty this year is the display of a book where information about each of the museum cats has been registered. In addition, representatives from the Vsevolozhsk Cat Museum — Russia’s only such museum — will hold a master class explaining how best to care for cats. The animals to be used in the demonstration will all be Hermitage alumni that now live in Vsevolozhsk and are waiting to be adopted.

“As part of the event, a musical about the Hermitage cats will be presented on the stage of the Hermitage Theater,” said Haltunen. “The show tells the story of how the cats help save the museum’s exhibits and has already been performed twice in the U.S.”

“Hermitage Cats Save the Day” is a musical drama based on a children’s book by Haltunen and Mary Ann Allin, “Anna and the Hermitage Cats.” It tells the story of a valuable artwork that is stolen from the Hermitage, causing the cancellation of the museum’s annual celebration for the cats. Chris Brubeck, son of the late jazz legend Dave Brubeck, composed the score.

Currently there are about 50 cats in residence at the State Hermitage Museum. They have the status of official museum workers and several charitable organizations look after them throughout the course of their lives.

The Day of the Hermitage Cat takes place at the State Hermitage Museum on Saturday, with all events starting at 12 p.m. On Sunday a performance of “Hermitage Cats Save The Day” will take place in the Hermitage Theater. For more information, visit www.hermitagemuseum.org