Mikhail Piotrovsky on Hermitage centres establishment: “Nobody in Russia can do it like they do in Kazan”

State Hermitage museum director, Russian Academy of Sciences associate member and Tatarstan Academy of Science honorary member, Mikhail Piotrovsky, has today delivered a public lecture in Kazan.

Prominent scientists, politicians and culture figures delivering public lectures has become a good tradition,” Tatarstan Academy of Sciences president, Akhmet Mazgarov, noted. “Meetings like today’s allow us hear the viewpoints of renowned science and culture figures on most pressing matters.”

In 2008, when M. Piotrovsky read his first public lecture in Kazan, they had “agreed the lectures would be traditional,” A. Mazgarov said.

The today’s lecture was themed The Greater Hermitage.

Welcoming all those present, Mikhail Piotrovsky noted it was a great honour and pleasure for him to speak at the Academy of Sciences. “It has to do with the huge work we, The Hermitage, carry out, and Tatarstan is our partner.”

The museum was a powerful scientific and educational centre, he went on to say, dwelling on the Greater Hermitage concept and work done in the run-up to the museum's 250th anniversary in 2014.

“The Greater Hermitage concept is a concept of the global museum’s fast-paced presence in the world, and the Hermitage Kazan centre is present in the world along with us,” M. Piotrovsky said. The Hermitage Kazan centre was as unique as all the other Hermitage centres.

The lector highlighted the role of a museum as a combination of several factors. “A museum is in this day and age one of the ways to get what the today’s world needs, continuous education of people,” M. Piotrovsky is confident. Besides, museums reared in people good taste, he added.

“To be competitive, the country needs high and globally acknowledged culture. It should be achieved through supporting culture that needs to be given money, and we need to realise it may not conform with immediate political ambitions. In exchange, culture has to render a service, people being given a chance to get pleasure, education, rest from their work and problems, and be educated in the spirit wanted by the state.”