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PRESS INFORMATION PRESS RELEASE Hermitage Amsterdam celebrates their visual or other similarities and differences tenth anniversary with two grand in culture and period. The experience will incite visitors to adopt a more open-minded and attentive jubilee exhibitions attitude to art. The second part of the exhibition De schatkamer! 2 February – 25 August 2019 will be a fascinating peregrination through all the Jewels! 14 September 2019 – 15 March 2020 departments and collections of the State Hermitage. Treasury! is scheduled to run from 2 February to 25 In 2019 Hermitage Amsterdam celebrates the August 2019. tenth anniversary of its opening. The anniversary will be marked by a whole year of special events and activities, including not just one, but two major jubilee exhibitions: Treasury! and Jewels! Jewels! The Hermitage’s fabulous jewellery collection is one of its greatest treasures. Over the centuries it has become the repository of thousands of precious Treasury! pieces. In the autumn of 2019, hundreds of them Masterpieces from the Hermitage will travel to the Netherlands to feature in Jewels! The jubilee year will start with Treasury! – a wide- Visitors will encounter flamboyant female rulers like ranging, kaleidoscopic overview of top pieces Elizabeth of Russia and Catherine the Great, but also from the many different collections of the State grand dukes and noble families of the nineteenth Hermitage. The show is the result of meticulous and early twentieth century. They had their portraits preparation over a long period and will be a painted by leading artists and on special occasions glittering feast of 25,000 years of art history. they wore dazzling gowns and ensembles set off by The masterpieces on show will represent cultures carefully selected bijoux. Jewels were a statement of and movements extending in time from earliest identity and a demonstration of taste, breeding and prehistory right through to the 21st century. wealth. Occasionally, they might also be designed to provoke or contain hidden symbolism. They Visitors will experience an amazing journey through were ordered from European jewellery firms like time and space, covering half the planet, from the Boucheron or Cartier, master goldsmiths like Claude Netherlands to China and from northern Siberia Ballin or, of course, from Fabergé, Goldsmith by to Egypt. Hermitage Amsterdam is able to present Special Appointment to the Imperial Crown. The an exhibition of such wide geographical and art- exhibits will reflect the fashions of four centuries: historical scope thanks to its partnership with the baroque, rococo, neoclassical, empire and art State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. With nouveau. holdings of over three million objects, the State Hermitage is one of the few truly encyclopaedic Jewels! is scheduled to run from 14 September 2019 museums in the world. to 15 March 2020. The over 250 exhibits will include masterpieces by big names like Bernini, Da Vinci, Dürer, Van Dyck, Fabre, Matisse, Rembrandt, Thorvaldsen, Tintoretto, Velázquez and Van der Weyden, but also works by lesser-known artists of startling talent. Visitors will experience an unique tour of art history that will HERMITAGE AMSTERDAM not only include items from prehistory, the Greco- Communication, Education & Marketing Department Roman world and the art of both Western Europe Martijn van Schieveen, Madeline van Vliet and the Orient, but will even encompass arms +31 (0)20 530 87 55 and armour, ancient books and manuscripts, the [email protected] decorative arts and contemporary art. Adopting an hermitage.nl/en/press innovative approach, the exhibition will present art objects from a wide range of periods and cultures Hires images are downloadable via in playful pairings that will surprise and delight by hermitage.nl/en/press/images-exhibitions/ BACKGROUND STORY Treasury! Masterpieces from the Hermitage Jubilee Exhibition #1 2 Feb | 25 Aug 2019 BACKGROUND STORY | 1 ‘A crazy, but fantastic idea’ The Hermitage Amsterdam has also used its extensive Back in the late nineties, Ernst Veen, the then director premises to accommodate the collections of other of De Nieuwe Kerk Amsterdam, came up with the museums, for example during the Vincent. The Van notion of establishing a branch of St Petersburg’s Gogh Museum in the Hermitage Amsterdam show in State Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam. Michail 2012–13 and the Russian Atelier on the Amstel event Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage, said in 2013–14. In addition, the Amsterdam Museum’s it was ‘a crazy, but fantastic idea’ and together they semi-permanent Portrait Gallery of the Golden Age went ahead and developed the project. As early as presentation (2014 – present), temporary exhibitions 2004 a pilot was launched in the Neerlandia building by the Outsider Art Museum (2016 – present) and on the Nieuwe Herengracht, where the first ten annual shows of work by the winner of the ABN exhibitions would take place. In 2007 the dream finally AMRO Art Award have become regular features of life came true: the nursing home occupying the historic in the former nursing home on the Amstel. seventeenth-century Amstelhof building moved to more appropriate modern premises outside the Two jubilee exhibitions city centre. The conversion of the Amstelhof into a This decade-long voyage through art history has now state-of-the-art museum could go ahead. The work inspired the idea of presenting a unique, kaleidoscopic was done to designs by architect Hans van Heeswijk survey of highlights from the many different (building), Merkx+Girod architects (interior) and collections of the State Hermitage. Treasury! – a Michael van Gessel (gardens). Two years later, on 20 light-hearted presentation of alluring masterpieces June 2009, the Netherlands’ newest museum opened drawn from all the collections – is the first of two exactly on time and on budget: Hermitage Amsterdam special jubilee exhibitions to be held in Amsterdam was a fact. next year. In the second half of the jubilee year, the State Hermitage will throw open its treasure chests 10 years at Hermitage Amsterdam: for an exhibition entitled Jewels! The museum has a fascinating voyage through art a vast jewellery collection including thousands of history pieces once worn by tsars and tsarinas, kings and Since the opening in 2009, sixteen major exhibitions princes, countesses and well-heeled commoners. They have been held at Hermitage Amsterdam using works reflect the fashions of four centuries and encompass of art from the collections in St Petersburg. With baroque, rococo, neoclassical, empire, art nouveau, twelve different departments and vast collections modern styles and contemporary (21st-century) art. numbering over three million items, the State Hermitage is an encyclopaedic museum of world art. It has provided material for fascinating journeys through the history of art, including exhibitions about the tsarist courts (At the Russian Court; Dining with the Tsars), biographical exhibitions (Peter the Great; Alexander, Napoleon & Josephine; Catherine, the Greatest; 1917. Romanovs and Revolution), and shows devoted to archaeology (Alexander the Great; Expedition Silk Road), great art of the past (Splendour & Glory; Rubens, Van Dyck & Jordaens; Spanish Masters; Dutch Masters; Classic Beauties) and modern art (Matisse to Malevich; Impressionism; Gauguin, Bonnard, Denis). In all, over 6,000 items have come to Amsterdam and over 3.5 million visitors have attended the exhibitions. BACKGROUND STORY | 2 Treasury! First section: open-mindedness Masterpieces from the Hermitage The first part of the exhibition, in the main gallery, The exhibition Treasury! will be a celebration of art will present visitors with paired works of art from throughout history. Over 250 works of art – from many different periods and cultures. Chosen for outstanding archaeological finds to top works by their surprising similarities, visual or otherwise, these both great and lesser-known artists and exquisite playful and exciting pairings will reveal similarities examples of the decorative arts – will offer the visitor and differences between cultures and over time that on an amazing 25,000-year journey through time and will encourage visitors to adopt a more open and space. A historical and geographical cross-section attentive attitude. Art is exciting and stimulating, encompassing a host of different cultures, from West offering many new discoveries, even in works that to East, and from Egypt to Siberia. have long been familiar. However, the exhibition will start with a single object: Art history is not a matter of degrees of authenticity the oldest in the entire Hermitage collection. The or originality; it is about the narratives and meanings ‘Venus of Kostenki’ is a 25,000-year-old fertility that underlie art objects. One of the interesting symbol made of limestone and next of kin to the aspects of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg famous, more or less contemporary, Venus of is that it stands literally on the dividing line between Willendorf. East and West. This is evident in its collections, which display stylistic features and reciprocal influences from all directions. The history of art is not unitary. Every culture, every period, even every individual art historian writes a different art history. Sometimes there are what you might call ‘blanks’. And the collection of the Hermitage is particularly well equipped to hold up a mirror to us, enabling us to understand the history of art just that little bit better. That is what