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About The State Hermitage Museum Foundation of Canada, Inc.

The State Hermitage Museum Foundation of Canada Inc. was established in 1998 to help in the preservation and security of the internationally important collections of art in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Increasingly the Hermitage has reached out to organizations like ours and to the art patrons of the world to ensure that the works of the great European masters such as Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci are preserved for future generations.

Canada has benefited from a multi-year exhibition exchange that has brought millions in tourist revenues to Toronto and Montreal. The first exhibition was Rubens and His Age, followed two years later by Voyage into Myth - Gauguin to Matisse and, in 2004, an exhibition of Tom Thomson's works went to Russia for the first time. In 2005/6, Catherine the Great - Arts for the Empire arrived in Canada. The exhibition, with the Romanov 18th century coronation coach as its centrepiece, was a tour de force, with hundreds of thousands of Canadians marvelling at Catherine's treasures. In the summer of 2006, an exhibition showcasing the Québec artist Riopelle captured the interest of the press and public in St. Petersburg. There will be many more stellar exhibitions in the future bringing the art of the Hermitage to Canada and taking important Canadian artists to Russia.

Generous contributions from Canadians have resulted in a number of major projects at the Hermitage. The Canadian Foundation undertakes projects that have a tangible and immediate impact on the welfare of the collections in areas where we have expertise and where we know they will make a difference. We implement our own projects, thereby ensuring complete transparency in the use of donated funds. Initially we raised over $700,000 to install ultraviolet protection on the 2,200 windows of the Hermitage complex - a project that stopped the damage caused by direct sunlight on priceless paintings and tapestries.

Our current undertaking is called the Collection Inventory Project and we are seeking the support of Canadians to catalogue the Hermitage collections. This project will help the Hermitage curators preserve the priceless objects within their care; it will open the Hermitage to the world via digitization of its collections and it will ensure that the Hermitage exhibition programme, through which the Museum shares its magnificent collections with the world, is managed efficiently and effectively. Now that the computer hardware, a sophisticated software management system and a dedicated project workforce are in place, we anticipate that it will cost $300,000 per year to maintain a steady pace on this mammoth task.

We welcome your support in helping to preserve one of the most unique repositories of world art in existence. Contact the Foundation at (613) 489-0794 Fax: (613) 489-0835 or mail to: The State Hermitage Museum Foundation of Canada Inc., 900 Greenbank Road, Suite 616, Ottawa, ON  K2J 4P6, Canada.

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