Imperialist ambitions

In 1997, the Russian Academy of Sciences gave the names Hermitage 4758 and Piotrovsky 4869 to two small planets discovered 500 million kilometres from earth. The signal honour paid to the State Hermitage Museum and Boris and Mikhail Piotrovsky— its dynastic succession of directors — heralded a new era of post-Soviet expansionism for the former Imperial museum: from now on, the sky would be the limit.

Since then, the Hermitage has opened branches in London, Las Vegas, Amsterdam, Kazan, Ferrara and Vyborg. More than a goodwill gesture, the St Petersburg museum’s overseas expansion has been a way of getting its collections seen. At home in Palace Square there’s room to display only 5 per cent of the three million objects amassed since Catherine the Great started collecting in 1764 — this despite the imperial collections’ subsequent overflow from the Small Hermitage into the Great Hermitage, then the New Hermitage and, after the revolution, the Winter Palace.