In keeping with tradition, the first Sunday in October was Students’ Day, a celebration of the opening of the new educational season in the State Hermitage’s Youth Centre. This year its main theme was the Venice Biennale.
The guests who had gathered in the Hermitage Theatre were welcomed by Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky. He spoke about the year of the collector, the museum’s immediate plans and the Biennale, where a key aspect of the Russian pavilion became reflections on how “classic art determines contemporary art and how they coexist.”
The talk about this important event for the museum was continued by the artist Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai, a direct participant in the exhibition. Beginning with an account of his own artistic method and the way his “plywood resonates in different landscapes”, including the Venetian setting, he went on to share his interpretations of classic art as embodied in the pavilion.
The numerous sections were presented to the students in the course of the event, including some new ones – the “Spanish Club” and “The Hermitage Picture Gallery: hall by hall”, while the lecturers presented their own authorial seminars devoted to costume, sculpture, music, dance, art criticism and other important topics.
At the end of the meeting there was a surprise awaiting the guests: crossing Palace Square, they went on a walk around the exhibition “The Morozov Brothers. Great Russian Collectors”.
