The Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam, once the largest satellite of the St Petersburg institution, will be renamed H’ART Museum after cutting ties with Russia, it announced on Monday. The Dutch museum, which previously relied on the Hermitage collection for its programming, has instead formed international partnerships with some of the world’s top institutions to display their works in the Dutch capital.
The museum’s new identity will come into effect on September 1. The Center Pompidou in Paris, the British Museum in London and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC will become the new partners of the H’ART Museum and plans for major exhibitions in collaboration with these museums over the next three years are already underway. .
The institution has already received support from companies such as the heritage lottery group VriendenLoterij, the Heineken brewery and the bank ABN AMRO to develop its new direction. The ELJA Foundation, a new philanthropic organization aimed at providing cultural opportunities for young people, will also fund the museum.
“This is an exciting new step for us, a contemporary and evolving model,” Annabelle Birnie, director of the museum, said in a statement. “We are capitalizing on our experience in the international field and are now spreading our wings. Our programming will be multi-voiced reflecting the times in which we live. We will show major art exhibitions as well as intimate presentations.
The rebranding and repositioning came more than a year after the Amsterdam Museum cut ties with its parent museum in March 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine. The Dutch institution said at the time that “a line has been crossed”.
Founded in 2009, the Hermitage Amsterdam was originally an independent, non-profit organization, but it had “unlimited rights” to borrow works from St. Petersburg’s historical collection. Cutting ties with Russia meant the future of the Amsterdam institution was in limbo, but that didn’t last very long.
Following the official launch of the new name and identity, H’ART Museum will work to develop future programs with its new partner institutions, which may involve art loans as well as various types of collaborations with curators and artists. . The museum has signed separate contracts with each of the partner institutions, according to the New York Times.
Upcoming highlights include the “Kandinsky», organized in partnership with the Center Pompidou, which should travel to the Netherlands in mid-2024. This will be the first of five exhibitions shared between the two institutions over a period of five years. The “British Museum”female powerThe exhibition will also travel to H’ART in 2026. And a major exhibition is planned in collaboration with the US-based Leiden Collection, in which the 17 Rembrandts from the private collection will be exhibited together for the first time. This show will take place in 2025, to celebrate the 750th anniversary of Amsterdam.
At the same time, the video installation work of Martine Gutierrez Clubbing (2012) from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is already on display in the museum’s redesigned space. A full schedule of exhibitions and programs will be announced later this year.
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