The State Hermitage Museum

Art Semester at the Hermitage

During two weeks from 9 to 22 August 2010 the program Art Semester at the Hermitage organized byìthe museum’s Youth Educational Center and the Hermitage’s Canadian Friends’ Club was held for the students of Canada’s higher education institutions of art.

After the contest arranged by the Hermitage’s Canadian Friends’ Club 10 students arrived to St Petersburg to participate in this educational program. They were offered a specialized course of lectures on the history of art at the Hermitage halls combined with creative classes of visual and applied arts and photography at the workshop of the Youth Center.

In addition, the program Art Semester developed by the center’s employees included excursions devoted to the history of St Petersburg, visits to museums, workshops of modern artists, drawing classes. Students visited the workshop of Alexander Dashevsky, a young, yet internationally renowned St Petersburg artist who told them about his work and ideas regarding the processes existing in the field of modern art in Russia and St Petersburg. During the trip to Kronstadt and the visit to the residence of St Petersburg branch of Cyland modern art center and media art laboratory the students had a meeting with Mikhail Krest, St Petersburg, and Andrew Demirjian, American media artist invited to Russia to participate in the new, fourth CYBERFEST festival of cybernetic art which will be held in St Petersburg in November 2010 and which was preparing its audio/video installations these days.

In the program Art Semester a special place was occupied by a course of practical classes that were held at the Hermitage halls and the Peter and Paul’s fortress. Students made sketches in the museum’s halls of ancient halls, participated in the master class of traditional wood painting that was held for them by Natalia Kruglova, Head of the Art Workshop of the Students’ Club of the Youth Center. Igor Lebedev, Head of the Creative Photography section of the Students’ Club of the Hermitage’s Youth Center, in the course of the master class as a conjuror, demonstrated to the students the capabilities of the simplest chemical materials, a developer and a fixative, for making a photograph without using a photo camera.

The results of art classes of Canadian students who participated in the Art Semester program were summarized in the course of a one-day reporting demonstration of works that was held at the Hermitage’s Youth Center on the last day of the program.

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http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/11/2010/hm11_6_150.html