The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia has plans to bring a new branch of the museum in Moscow; the new addition will be put into, what was previously, a 1960s car factory for ZIL.
ZIL constructed lorries and limousines until the Mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin, changed the building into an area for creative companies; today, it is home for Rambler-Afisha, a media group. There has been a contemporary cultural center in the building since 2012, which is said to be very popular with the local Moscow hipster groups.
The deal for the new museum branch is part of the Museum’s plan to open branches in other places in Russia, like Omsk, Vladivostok and Ekaterinburg, along with an opening in Barcelona, Spain, according to the museum’s General Director, Mikhail Piotrovsky.
Piotrovsky put his signature on the agreement for the museum branch in Moscow with LSR Group, the organization that will work to develop the two million square meter area designated for the Hermitage Museum satellite location. This location will not only display St. Petersburg artwork, but also hold lectures, and performances. This particular site is set to help support contemporary artwork and is planned to be constructed by 2018.
The new museum branch will be designed by Hani Rashid, a Canadian architect from the New York-based company Asymptote Architecture. Hermitage Museum put out a statement that announced the new satellite site would be part of its contemporary art project, the Hermitage 20/21 project, which is called Greater Hermitage.
The other satellite branches of the Hermitage Museum, for instance, the one in Omsk, are hard at work getting ready for an exhibition there. Other branches of the museum are already getting visits from tourists in Kazan, Vyborg, Amsterdam, Venice, the United States, Israel and Canada.
All of the new satellite branches of the Heritage Museum will get their content from the main museum, and the local cities will be responsible for the upkeep and funding to get the items from the main site to the satellite locations.
The Hermitage Museum is very popular with people who travel all over to get there and was first opened in 1852. It was founded by Catherine the Great back in 1764, and holds more than three million pieces of artwork.
