Hermitage Museum looking for money and art
Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of Russia’s State Hermitage Museum, came through New York recently looking for money and art.
Occupying a former royal palace in St. Petersburg, the Hermitage boasts 24 Rembrandts and 37 Matisses among its 2.9 million artworks. Yet postwar and contemporary art is conspicuously missing.
“We don’t have our own collection, so we are showing works from other museums and private collections,” said Piotrovsky. “We have very little money to buy contemporary art.”
So he met with art dealer Larry Gagosian and billionaire collector Ali Broad, checked up on art loans to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and greeted about 120 guests at a dinner at Christie’s auction house, aiming to raise $200,000 for his museum.