Three years after severing ties with the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Hermitage Amsterdam changes its name to become the H’ART Museum, the New York Times reports. The renamed institution will partner with three major international museums – the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, the Center Pompidou in Paris and the British Museum in London – to present exhibitions. Through separate contracts with the respective institutions, the new entity will borrow various exposures, modifying some of them; in addition, it will mount original exhibitions featuring works on loan from collaborating institutions.
“We are going to be like a museum for museums,” said Annabelle Birnie, director of the H’ART Museum. “Three partners will bring you much more than one.”
Opened in 2004 as an overseas extension of the St. Petersburg institution, Hermitage Amsterdam open in 2009 in the former Amstelhof, a 17th century building in the heart of the capital of the Netherlands. The Amsterdam institution has frequently borrowed funds from the Russian museum’s extensive collection to mount exhibitions. At the time of dissolving its connection with the St. Petersburg institution, the Hermitage Amsterdam was in the midst of a collaborative exhibition of Russian avant-garde art, featuring the work of Kazimir Malevich and Wassily Kandinsky. . The show ended early, costing the Amsterdam institution around $2 million. In the years that followed, the museum struggled to find a new identity and new sources of artwork, although Dutch institutions across the country helped with large-scale loans.
The H’ART museum will begin operating under its new name on September 1. The institution has signed a contract with the Pompidou to collaborate on five exhibitions over five years at H’ART. The inaugural exhibition resulting from this agreement will be an exhibition in 2024 of works by Kandinsky belonging to the French museum, itself planned for shutter in 2025 for at least five years for a major renovation. H’ART will organize three exhibitions each in collaboration with the Smithsonian and the British Museum over a period of six years. A full schedule is expected to be released in the fall.
