Geraldine Norman - The Hermitage: The Biography of a Great Museum

FOREWORD BY THE DIRECTOR OF THE HERMITAGE, PROFESSOR MIKHAIL PIOTROVSKY

T his book was the beginning of Geraldines love affair with the Hermitage. She studied its internal workings, looking for the unusual and the mysterious; she found what she was looking for, fell in love with the museum and began to serve it, in the same way as its faithful staff, the Ermitageniki. Together with Lord Rothschild, she created the Hermitage Rooms in Somerset House, whose seven years of existence have written a beautiful page into the history of the museums life in London and RussianBritish cultural relations. Geraldine went on to found the British Friends of the Hermitage (now called the Hermitage Foundation UK) and for many years has been its executive director. She founded the magazine Hermitage and was initially its editor, financial manager and marketing manager rolled into one. Geraldine initiated a series of exhibitions on British contemporary art in the framework of the Hermitage 20/21 project. With her help, several important cultural projects have been implemented, including the financing of the restoration of the General Staff Building and great films about the Hermitage. Geraldine is an informal ambassador for our museum in the UK and a pro-bono advisor to the director of the Hermitage. All of this developed out of an understanding and sympathy for the spirit of the museum that she acquired while writing this book twenty years ago. Now this new and updated edition is being published and will cast its spell again.

For all her love of the Hermitage, Geraldine has not lost her personal approach to the material she is treating often critical and not always comfortable for the people about whom she about writes. At the very beginning of our acquaintance, one famous British art critic told me: Be careful. This woman is very dangerous! Geraldine, indeed, was already a famous journalist, writing about the unscrupulous vagaries of the art market and often causing trouble for major museums, collectors and dealers. However, I did not have the opportunity to follow his advice. I had already allowed her to study the life of the Hermitage without any restrictions and write what she wanted in her own style. I took a risk (as we often did in the 1990s) and the risk paid off. The book was an important addition to the numerous volumes that had already been written about the Hermitage; it was interesting and unusual, as well as insightful. Geraldine questioned and listened. Many forgotten or underrated characters started talking through her lips; she did not hesitate to question established opinions and reputations. She was above all fascinated by the history of the Hermitage in the twentieth century, and especially by what she saw first hand in the 1990s.

The book is something of a rarity in its treatment of this period. Geraldines account of the decade is spiced with intrigue, which today has been almost forgotten but which seemed very important at the time. Different voices express their alternative views in the book and the memory of them has only been preserved here. At the same time, Geraldine remained objective, which was completely lacking in most of the memoirs that had appeared covering the same period. She was able to convey the dramatic nature of the situation when the social challenges of the Perestroika movement threatened to ruin both the traditions of the museum and the museum itself.

The book is, of course, typically English in its approach. No Russian would have written in this way about the Hermitage. With all Geraldines love for the museum and the accuracy achieved by looking in from the outside, the book has a typically English sense of superiority towards people of a different culture, a feeling that they do not quite match up to generally accepted standards. This feature of a foreigners view also makes the book interesting and useful. Sometimes it is easy to be annoyed by this, but it is these sections of the text that stimulate reflection and response. Some of my writings about the Hermitage and my directors decisions were direct answers to Geraldines book.

This new edition of the Biography of a Great Museum is a guide to the deep workings of the Hermitage spirit. It is fascinating for an insider to read and re-read. I am sure it will be equally so for our visitors.

Mikhail Piotrovsky
Director of the State Hermitage