Featured Events in Saint Petersburg in November, 2024(December Updated)

On 27 July 2023, the exhibition “Beauty as Rhythm: Female Figures in the Collection of Traditional African Art of the State Hermitage Museum” begins its run in the General Staff building.The display features five wooden statues of women that belong to three different African cultures – Dan, Bamana (or Bambara) and Mossi – and date from around the turn of the 20th century. Such sculptural depictions had both aesthetic and magical significance in the communities where they were created. In the Bamana culture, they were involved in male initiation rites and conveyed the most prominent features of an ideal woman – an oversized bust, coiffured hair and jewellery. Among the Mossi, they were produced for girls entering puberty. They could dress these figurines (in essence dolls), adorn them and anoint them with oil. Taking care of them became a compulsory practice for girls entering into womanhood. Researchers term African statuettes of this kind “fertility figures” and their function is always bound up with the power of the feminine, the birth-giving, creative principle. One of the figures included in the exhibition, for example, depicts a woman with a child on her back. In this way, the sculptor focusses attention on the main female social role – motherhood. The creators of the exhibition invite us to look at these objects as works of art capable of telling us about a different conception of beauty, one to which Europeans are unaccustomed. Strict realism is something alien to the African artists: they strive to convey meanings by different means. Beauty, in this instance, lies not in the harmony of specific features, but in correspondence to some ideal, to the archetype of the essentially feminine. That is created, first and foremost, with the aid of rhythm. As Léopold Sédar Senghor, the French and Senegalese politician, poet and philosopher wrote: “For an African, a beautiful statue is one that evokes particular emotions in him. Here, for example, I have before me a statuette of the Dogon people. It does not in the least resemble an image of a beautiful woman, but this statuette of a seated woman is captivating, because it is imbued with rhythm.”

The exhibition “He Conquered Both Time and Space...” organized by the Russian Museum in the halls of the Stroganov Palace is timed to the 225th anniversary of Alexander Pushkin’s birth. This is the first ever large-scale exhibition held in the Russian Museum to address the genius of Russian and world culture, whose anniversary will be an international event. The exhibition presents an unprecedented number of exhibits – more than three hundred works of painting, sculpture, graphic, decorative, applied and folk arts exclusively from the collection of the Russian Museum. The museum rich depositories enable to characterize the oeuvre of the great writer most fully and diversely and to reconstruct the cultural and historical background, which witnessed the formation and heyday of Pushkin’s unique talent. The show is dedicated to the poet’s characters, contemporaries and descendants. The artistic material presented at the exhibition dates back to the 18th–20th centuries.

The exhibition is dedicated to one of the most important events in anyone's life. Weddings have long been considered not only a family, but also a public occasion, and therefore require compliance with a set of rules established in the early 19th century, which have hardly changed since then. The outward features of a Russian wedding are various elements of the bride's and groom's attire, gifts, dowry and icons. Such exhibits from the State Hermitage stock make it possible to see objects that many years ago accompanied lovers through the happiest period of their lives.The wedding was preceded by a betrothal or engagement ceremony. The exhibition includes a dress that the future Princess Yusupova Zinaida Ivanovna Naryshkina wore on her betrothal, as well as icons used to bless the bride and groom.

“The Hermitage’s Carl Fabergé Rooms preserve the memory of the court jeweller and Hermitage restorer and are intended to stimulate both the study of his legacy and the development of the traditions that he established. It is this purpose that is served by the collection of works by modern-day gemstone-carvers, superb artists with fine taste, that we are presenting today,” Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, commented. The display tells about the creative endeavours of modern-day artists, their experiments in working with semiprecious stones and their striving to combine the achievements of their predecessors with fresh tendencies. The exhibition features more than 35 works that bring together original ideas and a subtle feel for the material, professional execution and virtuoso technical approaches. The creators of the majority of the works are gemstone-carvers based in Saint Petersburg. Also on show in the hall are pieces made by present-day German craftspeople, representatives of the oldest school of European gemstone-carving art located in the town of Idar-Oberstein.

November 2023 marks the 175th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding Russian orientalist, historian and archaeologist Nikolai Ivanovich Veselovsky (1848-1918). He was a man who left an important mark on Russian scholarship with his works on the history and archaeology of Central Asia, the Golden Horde and the northern Black Sea region, as well as works on the history of Oriental studies and archaeology in the country. The exhibition includes more than 200 unique exhibits describing the sites and archaeological cultures discovered by Veselovsky - the Maikop and Scythian cultures, artifacts from the "Golden Cemetery", the medieval Belorechensk necropolis and other places. The objects selected for the exhibition are the most important of the excavations and purchases carried out by this scholar, who systematically acquired antiquities for the Imperial Archaeological Commission. The main focus is on presenting little-known or completely unknown objects. The exhibition is also accompanied by copies of documents (including some previously unpublished documents) and pictorial reconstructions from the research archives of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The art of drawing was the visceral thread for the entire Italian artistic process in the 15th and 16th centuries. The drawing was the laboratory in which the transition to the art of the Modern Era came about; it was what served as the starting point for painting, sculpture and architecture. The creative searches, unexpected insights and main discoveries came about first on a sheet of paper. The print for its part was the guide to new creative ideas, the art of the model pattern. At first an example of new subjects or a visual textbook of anatomy, then a yardstick for style, and finally a sample of a personal manner of working, that is to say of artistic individuality. Gathered together in one setting, the prints and drawings allow us to trace the complex, at times contradictory, yet meaty and vigorous picture of the evolution of Italian art at the time of its greatest flourishing. The exhibition features some 150 works. They include miniatures executed on expensive parchment in the late 14th century and rapid sketches made from life by Mannerist artists, monumental colour woodcuts in the chiaroscuro technique and austere burin engravings, allegories that have still to be figured out and religious images full of pious emotion. On show are the personal creations of Andrea Mantegna, Filippino Lippi. Giulio Romano, Marcantonio Raimondi, Francesco Parmigianino, Baccio Bandinelli, Giovanni Bellini, Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Tintoretto. Many works have been given fresh attributions; several dozen are going on public display for the first time.

The display will also contain examples of Russian icon-painting, works of Oriental art (a Buddhist tangka and sculpture), archaeological artefacts, manuscripts and documents connected with the artist’s life and oeuvre. One of the main tasks of the exhibition is to present Roerich’s legacy in conjunction with the leitmotif of his creative work – the idea of respect and protection for the values of knowledge and culture. The exhibition project is being prepared by the State Hermitage in conjunction with the Saint Petersburg State Museum-Institute of the Roerich Family and the State Museum of Oriental Art. The participants include museums in Russia, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, India and the USA.

The exhibition will acquaint visitors with the main milestones in the life and service of the great Russian poet. The career of Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (1803–1873) as a state official of the Russian Empire can be traced through reproductions of historical materials. The stands carry portraits of Tyutchev himself and members of his family as well as outstanding statemen of the period, along with passages from his poetry and letters.

The display has been organized by the State Hermitage in conjunction with the Erebuni Historical and Archaeological Museum-Reserve and is the first exhibition under a collaboration agreement between the two museums. Over the course of a year, within the permanent display of the Oriental Department, visitors will be able to see a representational presence of the Erebuni museum and acquaint themselves with three exhibits from its stocks. A special place among these is taken by a basalt block bearing a cuneiform inscription of King Argishti I about the foundation of Erebuni.

“Ilya Kabakov is perhaps the only Russian artist of the second half of the 20th century to have become a generally acknowledged world great. Ilya and Emilia Kabakov were all but the only people in the Western world to speak out publicly against breaking ties with Russian cultural institutions. In the General Staff building the total installation devoted to Soviet civilization has consonances with the displays devoted to the history of the previous – imperial – Russian civilization. Its protagonist, however, is the little man, the successor to personages from Gogol and Dostoyevsky,” Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, commented. Ilya and Emilia Kabakov are famous Conceptualist artists who have gone down in history as the creators of a new genre – the total installation. It is an artistic space filled with a specific atmosphere, a separate environment in which everything – not just individual objects, but also their surroundings, the colour and configuration of the walls, lighting, sound and smells – takes on fresh meanings and serves to intensify the image devised by the creators. The total installation “Monument to a Lost Civilization” became one of the largest in the Kabakovs’ oeuvre. It was produced and first shown by its creators in Palermo in 1999. The total installation takes the form of the design for a utopian museum-city, something of which the artists had dreamed for many years. It was conceived as a memorial to the civilization in which they were born and spent the greater part of their lives – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Like archaeologists, the Kabakovs collected, described and systematized “shards” of that no longer extant civilization in their full-scale installations. Drawing on their personal experience and recollections, they designed their museum in such a way that, wandering through its various installation-rooms, viewers who had never seen that civilization would be able to form their own conception of it.

The exhibition of drawings Line. Stroke. Spot in the Russian Museum refers to the classic pages of history and the works that make the pride of the museum’s collection. The show features the best works of graphic art by the leading Russian masters of the 20th century from the collection of the Russian Museum. Viewers can get acquainted with the work of the most prominent artists of the first half of the 20th century: Mikhail Vrubel and Valentin Serov, Alexandre Iacovleff and Vasily Shukhaev, Pyotr Miturich and Pyotr Lvov, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and Nikolai Tyrsa, Vladimir Lebedev and Vladimir Konashevich. The works by Boris Vlasov and Boris Kocheishvili, Oleg Kudryashov and Kirill Mamonov, Mikhail Vainman and Boris Ermolayev, Boris Kalaushin and Mai Miturich, Pyotr Dik and Evgeny Dobrovinsky successfully combine old pictorial traditions with new plastic searches of 20th-century artists. The exhibition features not only graphic works, but also works that present line and stroke in unexpected materials.

Karl Brullov needs no special introduction. He was the only Russian classical artist of the 19th century who gained fame in Europe in his lifetime and worldwide recognition after his death. He certainly had natural gift for painting. Moreover, he was a highly qualified professional of brilliant and fascinating personality. Brullov was best known for his ingenuity, immense erudition, independence of mind and behaviour, noble indifference to material values, official awards and honours, incredible freedom in actions, as well as for his enduring devotion to artistic endeavour. Only Brullov was honoured with a kind of title “Karl the Great” that showed the appreciation and admiration of his colleagues, art connoisseurs, and students during his lifetime. He was a true artistic genius, an innovator and Pushkin of Russian painting.

The creations of the artistic craftsmen of Lorraine led glassmaking to flourish as one of the main fields in the decorative and applied art of the Art Nouveau era. Twelve firms that specialized in the manufacture of artistic glass will be represented in the exhibition, the majority of them practically unknown in this country. Among the 111 exhibits, visitors will be able to view vases, lamps, flasks and paperweights. The State Hermitage is providing 34 pieces, some of which will be on show for the first time. A considerable portion of the display will be made up of previously unpublished items owned by the Saint Petersburg collector Yury Borisov.

The State Russian Museum and the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus open the unprecedented exhibition Russia and Belarus: Crossed Destinies. The Marble Palace presents works by Belarusian artists who graduated from Russian art schools and whose art became the world heritage. The masters often received their professional education in Moscow and St Petersburg, belonged to the same art associations and generally adhered to a single tradition. At the same time, their work retained national features, views of native nature, national heroes and types.

The word ‘tidings’ appeared a long time ago, yet it is quite relevant to modern life filled with various kinds of news. The exhibition is devoted to the issues of transmitting and receiving information, its reliability and deceptiveness. The exhibition features 12 sections: Letter; Message as a Ritual; Newspaper; Radio; Telephone; Television; Letters, Codes, and Ciphers; Gossip, Rumours, and Misinformation; Messages from Space; Messengers; Signal; Digital World. The artists are more interested not in the technological aspects of communication processes but rather in humanistic ones. All the works are united by the motif of tidings – news – messages.

Denis Von Meck, a descendant of Pytor Tchaikovsky and the von Meck family, will present a special lecture about one of the 19th century's greatest composers and the 25 days Tchaikovsky psent in America. Join us for an insightful evening followed by a reception, courtesy of Russian American Cultural Heritage Center (RACH-C). Please note this lecture will be conducted in Russian language. Information Source: Theater 86 | eventbrite

Pulpfor 2024 is gearing up to be the event of the year, with industry professionals from around the globe flocking to the picturesque city of Saint Petersburg. Held at the state-of-the-art Expoforum, this gathering is set to take place from November 12th to 14th, 2024. This prestigious event promises to be a hub of innovation, showcasing the latest advancements and trends in the pulp and paper industry. Attendees can expect a three-day extravaganza, packed with insightful presentations, cutting-edge exhibits, and ample networking opportunities. With its serious and official tone, Pulpfor 2024 is the perfect setting for professionals seeking to stay ahead of the curve in this ever-evolving sector. Mark the calendar - this is one event that's not to be missed.

Ah, Sfitex 2024! The event of the year that's got everyone in the security and fire safety industry on the edge of their seats. This isn't just any old conference – it's the crème de la crème, set to take place in the magnificent city of Saint Petersburg. Now, let's cut to the chase. Sfitex 2024 will be held at the state-of-the-art Expoforum, a venue that's second to none in Russia’s cultural capital. From November 26th to 28th, 2024, attendees will have the opportunity to rub shoulders with industry leaders, discover cutting-edge technologies, and gain insights that are sure to set them apart from the competition. Talk about a feather in your cap! With a lineup of speakers that's as impressive as the Hermitage Museum's art collection, this event promises to be as informative as it is inspiring. And let's not forget about the networking opportunities - they'll be as plentiful as blinis at a Russian feast. So mark those calendars and start counting down the days until Sfitex 2024. It's an event that's not to be missed, and it's sure to be the talk of the town.

Mark your calendars folks, because the International Forum-Exhibition Russian Industrialist 2024 is just around the corner! In the heart of Saint Petersburg, the Expoforum will play host to this prestigious event from November 26th to 28th. With industry leaders, innovators, and experts from around the globe, it's the place to be for those looking to stay ahead in the industrial game. Attendees can expect a jam-packed three days of exhibitions, seminars, and networking opportunities that'll set the tone for the future of industry. No stone is left unturned at this gathering - whether it's the latest technological advancements or groundbreaking research - the International Forum-Exhibition Russian Industrialist 2024 will showcase it all. So, heads up, because this is one event that any industry professional worth their salt won't want to miss. See you there!