Mikhail Piotrovsky’s interview with the radio station Echo of Moscow: The life of the museum in the time of COVID – exhibitions, current and future

The guest in our virtual studio is the General Director of the Hermitage, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Mikhail Piotrovsky.

What I would like to ask you about is the changes that have taken place in the Hermitage due to the pandemic. What has altered?

When people ask me generally what has changed in the Hermitage – as a result of the reforms or something else – I always say that we try to see to it that nothing changes in the Hermitage. We are trying to see to it that nothing changes in the Hermitage after we opened it, so as to preserve everything that good in it. Right now, it’s not only been preserved, but a lot of good things have appeared because people are coming to the museum not in a crowd after queueing up, but according to a timetable. As a result, there are fewer of them, but each person who comes to the Hermitage can view it calmly, without crowds rushing past, actually look at things. They can prepare for their visit to the Hermitage because we are putting a great many lectures and guided tours online. For that reason those are calculated – as is the whole Hermitage – for various categories of people: there are straightforward tours, where there are plenty of fine words, but you don’t need to think so much, there are more complex tours, and there are tours with specialists. Everything has become considerably more diverse and better organized. There are no queues. Admittedly, you do have to make a reservation in advance. On the other hand, we are arranging things so that the museum receives as many people as suits it. As suits the museum exhibits, and the people so that they can go around pleasantly.

Yesterday, I walked around the whole museum. In each hall there were 5–7 people, 10–15 in the big ones. Everyone is keeping their distance, but at the same time no-one is jostling anyone, and I think, all in all, that’s no bad thing. You need to follow a route, but the route is easy. The only thing is that you can’t have people coming at each other from opposite directions – that does create various inconveniences, including health-related ones. But generally speaking, a fixed route is something natural for the Hermitage. It always was like that: go ahead and kept the windows on your left, or right, and there you have it – a fixed route. We are trying to see to it that nothing changes from that.
Of course, we are receiving fewer people. That is a convenience, though, for those who do come – we should always bear that in mind. You know one person’s freedom ends where another’s begins. It’s always like that: for those who do come to the Hermitage, it’s very convenient. For those who don’t come to the Hermitage, they will have to wait. Besides, at the moment we don’t have those concessions that we ourselves have been paying for – and that means that there are fewer children, school pupils and pensioners coming. Still, that is almost in accord with the social policy of city authorities, who, in Moscow for example, are removing concessions so that children and pensioners don’t use public transport.
Now we are doing a great deal of work online, but on the whole we are sticking to everything that we have planned. Despite the health situation not having improved in the least, we are beginning to fulfil our obligations. Those obligations are bound up with the system of the Greater Hermitage, an important part of which is Hermitage Days and the operation of Hermitage satellites outside of Saint Petersburg.

A recording of the interview (in Russian) is available on the Echo of Moscow website: https://echo.msk.ru/programs/time/2723177-echo/.