Presentation of The Hermitage Friends’ Club in Finland

The new non-profit organization was registered with the city of Helsinki’s patents and registration bureau on 10 September 2015. At a meeting at the Kiasma museum of contemporary art that was organized by the Hermitage Friends’ Club jointly with Kiasma, Mikhail Piotrovsky officially announced that the new club of friends of the museum was beginning to function.

The Hermitage Friends’ Club in Finland has become the seventh charitable organization to join the international family of Friends of the Hermitage. The club’s plans included arranging and conducting a variety of cultural events aimed at strengthening Russo-Finnish cultural ties and the advancement of collaboration between museums and cultural institutions in the two countries.

As Mikhail Borisovich observed during a working meeting with the board of The Hermitage Friends’ Club in Finland, “the system of international societies of Friends of the museum has shown itself to be one of the best means of familiarizing Friends in different countries not only with the collections, but also with the spirit of the museum. We are delighted that at last our traditional links with Finnish cultural institutions are acquiring an additional aspect. The Hermitage Friends’ Club in Finland is closely connected with the Hermitage and with everything that will be done in the Hermitage.”

The programme of the Hermitage Director’s visit included a number of meetings with the museum community of Finland, including ones with the heads of the country’s main museums.

Mikhail Borisovich met the heads of the Finnish National Gallery (a museum complex that unites Helsinki’s three largest museums) – Risto Ruohonen, Director General of the Finnish National Gallery; Leevi Haapala, Director of Kiasma; and Kirsi Eskelinen, Director of the Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Museum Director of Ateneum Art Museum Mrs. Susanna Pettersson discussed questions of the development of collaboration between the Hermitage and museums and cultural institutions in Finland.

In the evening, the Kiasma theatre auditorium was the setting for a meeting between the Hermitage Director and the Finnish museum community and Friends. Following an introduction that Mikhail Borisovich called “Who owns the Hermitage?”, he presented to the gathering his new book My Hermitage. The evening ended with a showing of Ashot Dzhezayan’s film The Hermitage with Love.

The evening was attended by both officials, including Alexander Rumyantsev, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Finland, and representatives of Finland’s cultural public – journalists, museum workers and many Friends of Finnish museums.