ah, a ah ah ah oh is your media a reflection of reality?

in a world transformed what will make you feel safer? high selection for community. are you going the right way or are you being led somewhere? direct. what is true? wharf is faith. in the world corrupted, you need to descend a join us in the depths or remain in the shallows. i mc sanchez, and i'm here to play with you. whatever you do, you do not watch my new show. seriously. why watch something that's so different.

opinions that you won't get anywhere else, work of it please. if you have the state department, the cia weapon makers, multi $1000000000.00 corporations, choose your facts for you. go ahead. i change and whatever you do. don't watch my show stay mainstream, because i'm probably gonna make you uncomfortable. my show is called direct impact, but again, you probably don't want to watch it because it might just change the way things ah museums are important for preserving our history so that it isn't lost to future generations. but our physical museum spaces themselves, a relic of the past. this is one of the best museums in the world. uh huh. touching st. petersburg,

we help ruskie is the director here and i bet he has some answers. ah, the student of history is always bio energy that resides in the physical space. the energy that resides in paintings that energy cannot be fully conveyed through technology. the restoration ends. what assumptions begins. do you think i can try my hand to today? ah, i'm very, very supervising at the hermitage. there are 2 types of question that are forbidden, why i wear my scarf all the time. and what's my favorite painting? professor petrosky nice to you. thank you very much for hosting us here. i'm basically, this is the hermitage. you've been the director here for 30 years. the world has

changed a lot in this time. what is the hermitage or how has the hermitage changed along with it? oh, well, we've seen him right now. we're in the winter palace. it's part of the hermitage and a monument to russian statehood, but also a world famous art museum. i do hope the hermitage hasn't changed much in 30 years, but our job is to preserve this wonderful 19th century museum and make sure it continues to tell stories. it takes a lot of work to keep it from changing, and that's why we've launched the greater hermitage project to call it an entire complex of facilities, including the new buildings on palace square. as a result, we've doubled our exhibition space where we've also opened a storage facility at hermit, i started to live near that old village. finally, we've established a number of satellite museums pyramids our previously we had hm at our satellites in russia and all around the world was even for now, only the russian branches are active with us. while the hermitage is

a modern high tech museum with a global presence at the worst, i believe it still manages to preserve the spirit of the 19th century. so history, it changes, people can manipulate history if you will, based on their own agendas, or how do you keep a history from being changed so that you can so that it is non biased and so that it is as impartial. no. is florida. can you boy history is always biased home was a, what a museum does is give people an opportunity to make their own interpretations based on authentic pieces of history and all the items here are authentic with us. we don't offer interpretations of what every person learns different things from different sources that are what makes our museum. great is that while we have our own viewpoint, we let everyone tell their story the way they want to tell it. i'm similar. let me

give you an example. we're about to enter the gallery dedicated to the patriotic war of 18. 12. was there a paintings there which depict the battle about a dinner for russians? this was a great victory of the russian empire, but to the french, it was a great french victory. history is always biased that way. we've also got paintings of the battle of betters enough. they tell the story of napoleon fleeing russia. we don't deserve it would appear to show another great victory for russia, wouldn't it, that we also know that the commander of the russian army at arizona was not included in this series of portraits because he let napoleon, old god get away. what? so this shows that history can be interpreted in different ways which can sometimes contradict each other. so i know that a lot of museums have a technology advanced technologies like 3 d exhibits, v r i'm they use augmented reality. maybe i, how is the hermitage adapting to this? do you have exhibits that use a new technology,

logistical to put into between now in the process of creating what we call the celestial hermitage. much of what we do involves cloud technology performance. well, this is especially relevant today as russia finds itself in an intellectual and cultural blockade, justin mcgill, and so everything we do ends up in the cloud. now you don't have to physically come to the hermitage to discover its treasures. it's a all of our exhibitions are uploaded to this virtual hermitage and we do exclusive digital exhibitions as well. we have a series of items that we exhibit in virtual reality and put on display physically in other museums as part of hermitage days, augmented reality and virtual reality have been a huge success. you can put on a special headset and float all the way to the ceiling. take a better look at the statue of use and so on. let, importantly, all these cutting edge technologies in the hermitage must be subordinate to the 19th century aesthetic culture and history. technology comes and goes in waves,

there are technological shifts every 5 years or so. we can no longer use disks made 5 years ago, let alone those from a decade ago. some basic things must be preserved. but regardless of the change in technology, all the more so because modern digital technology takes away from the art, it's not something that everyone understands, but a digital picture is often worse than it's analog counterpart. the same way a vinyl record is better than a digital record. stamping into a room like this, this hallway is just magnificent. you can feel the history here. or is it fair to say that there will always be a place in the world for physical museum spaces? i'm sort of affect visits. loaner absolutely. with physical museums will always be around. you can talk all you want about cutting edge technology or what the energy that resides in the physical space of us. the energy that resides in paintings that energy cannot be fully conveyed through technology. this will work. yes,

technology is useful, but that's it. here we have some portraits of men who fought in the war against napoleon. this is the duke of wellington, but he served as a russian field marshal. so he's up there. these are wonderful portraits over there with equipment that provides detailed information about every work of art. good morning, this is one of the ways technology can help us on that. but it still comes down to people who are many poems written about the people you see here. and they certainly exude the kind of energy that helps you immerse yourself in the history. likewise, these photographs here help you understand what it was like in the years of the great patriotic war during the siege of leningrad when the werner portraits on display here only empty frames or theatre of nibble. even without the portraits. this place still had a way to speak to people that of it's worth it. so let's say a new piece becomes available and information are, comes with a new day guard, or a new renoir is discovered. what is the process? how does the museum go about acquiring that piece? and can you talk me through?

how do you find out about it and how do you get it here to the hermitage? are no federal way. firstly, we don't buy things like a new day guard because we already have many of his works. secondly, we don't always have the funds to make such grand purchases. but when we do come across something that catches our interest to you, okay, there is a special committee that looks at the item. so provides us a detailed description and delivers an opinion on whether or not we should buy it. then with the committee, we have a discussion to answer to key question senior, do we really need it and can we afford it? i think if we can, we start raising the money while others can feel. i can think of one famous painting, salvador monday by leonardo da vinci, got it, and these people went around trying to sell it to everyone. what they brought it to us as well. i mean, not the original, of course. but once we looked at the painting, we knew right away, it wasn't what we needed and shipped with us. we had better paintings by da vinci, his watcher,

and we also have better paintings from the same school of painting. in fact, we even have a better salvatore. monday, painting by titian. occasionally there is a piece we really need to buy his recovery, in which case we get all worked up, reach out to the sponsor and the patrons and get them to buy the piece for us to the will. typically, the item is not some over hyped painting, but a specific work of art that the hermitage would benefit from none, none in the number with over. you mentioned what does the hermitage need or what is the hermitage that you really, really want to tell me as the director here? what would you really, really like to add to the hermitage collection? honestly, i can't name any things i do want to. you simply can't buy it. we could use of a mirror, i guess with a mirror. it's really difficult to get a decent vermeer larry, once there was this fair, me a painting on the market and they said, surely some russian tycoon will buy it and donated to the hermitage when there was no tycoon that the painting wasn't that good either. that you just can't get your

hands on quality art in the when it comes to the 20th century contemporary art, we have all the essentials. we've got dance and music by matisse. we've got value, which is black square, a gift by the way. and we've got the red wagon by tobacco, also a donation. we have some wonderful paintings by and some kiefer so i'd say we have the 20th century covered as for the 21st century. but of there aren't any artist yet that we could use are kind of related question, but a little more personal. what is your favorite piece or maybe something that is closest to your heart here in the touch of the bridge. now that's a taboo question. at the hermitage, there are 2 types of question that are forbidden for why i where my scarf all the time. and what's my favorite painting. if i reveal my favorite painting, people will keep giving me reproductions of it all. the time the director of the hermitage has a right to a private life. i have a book called director's choice. i understand it lists all the pieces i've personally chosen and those aren't my personal favorites. are you just the ones i

suggest everyone should see to better understand what the hermitage has to offer to the school. now we know that the hermitage has large vaults, a huge collection, and i museums like the loop in the smithsonian, the united states, they have about 7 percent, only 7 percent of their collection on display for the public out. how much do you have available to the public percentage was i should think that's not the right way to look at it. your 1st, a museum is not a gallery because it exists to show only a small part of their collection. it, every museum consists of collections. one, if you don't have collections, you're not considered a museum. people in charge of these collections study, restore and preserve exhibits. some of these exhibits are shown to the public in museum. so that's where your figure comes from. it's usually to 10 percent in larger museums. in smaller museums, the figure tends to be higher, and then this doesn't apply to the hematologist toilet. over many years we have

built a large complex of open storage facilities called and thought about us thought i had the revenue. that's old village in ship like all of our exhibits are on display . they're not like in here where we've got a couple of paintings on each wall over there. we've got hundreds and hundreds of them. people go and explore the storage facilities just like they go to restoration studios to see what our specialists do with these works of art overall, which was we went to the stories that have now restoration and storage center for ourselves to see where age warn masterpieces get a new life. lo, larry, what you're doing is incredibly interesting. thank you for taking the time to speak with us. i. i've been looking around, i see in your tool kit, you have cotton swabs. you have scalpels, it seems more like a surgeons toolkit. are you an artist or are you more like a, a doctor, a surgeon,

mover polish. the lagoon is that you are right. there are lots of similarities between medicine and restoration. young that we have similar instruments and to intricate work that requires focus. we care for paintings like doctors, my medical professionals, treat people we treat canvasses of the ideal situation is when there's a balance between artistic and surgical word. i mean, you must have both each and sometimes you have to perform complex technical things that don't require artistic skills. or but then you get to colors and cleaning. in order to do that, you know, you have to know and understand a lot about art. like in medicine, good doctors will study for decades. restoration requires that to you and we have various schools that teach the trade from the basics to the top level. it could take decades to become a qualified specialist in this field. and 15 if older than him or from proctor

coach motor videos. and you know, so a time can do very bad things are to paintings to all of us actually. um, is it possible to restore any type of painting based on any type of damage? the shipping from any of a yes, there are various degrees of damage. but sometimes it's very minor and doesn't require that much work. and other times we get a severely damaged painting with when to continue with the medicine analogy, extensive surgery or treatment is required at the hermitage. we have exhibits that have had a troubled history. they've survived the wars and all sorts the painting on restoring the right now is by yon privates, to a belgian artist who lived and worked at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. there is an amazing story behind this painting that was trapped inside a wall for a long time. in the 1650s, there were an iconic campaigns and many artworks were destroyed. this painting was

hidden behind a church wall in brouge from it remained for the 230 years and was discovered by accident with us on the french destroyed the cathedral ocean therapy from the from china will have not gotten ah, what is the if i may ask the most, a damaged painting that you have personally ever had to restore this painting as an example of how some artwork has been badly treated. it is also by yon proposed and initially it was the same size as this one. the painting was intended for an altar, so it was over 2 meters now, only a fragment remains young, which was cut out of the large canvas and it was painted over to fit into the new format. this golden background was just covered and black paint. i don't understand the artistic value of that decision. i guess they were guided by some popular trends of the time. but this is an example of the terrible damage that could be done to a painting when it's cut into pieces washed out in

a load of painted over. when is a changed drastically in accordance with the trends with or anything like that up we, our goal is to restore the original appearance intended by the author into the art history is based on original works, the colors and palate, in order to avoid false attribution or other misconceptions we need to uncover the truth and that is what we try to do. if possible, we remove all other layers and uncover the original painting and presenting it to the viewer in the way it was 1st created. customer number larry, i've been watching you work. um i think i'm ready. are you ready to give me a try? i want to help the yeah, i think you will have this opportunity after you study the trade for 10 years or so . we know of situations when people without any special training, try to do this work and end up ruining everything. so i wouldn't recommend it. so not to the andre. thank you very much for meeting with us today. ah,

the work is very important, in my opinion. you're incredibly brave to take your hands and put them to history like this. talk to me about the process when a painting comes in until when it goes out. how do you do your work? fietta, which is 1st we evaluate the condition of the paintings in the extent of the damage and develop our restoration plan. after we make sure that the painting has been sufficiently consolidated and it won't crumble, we figured out if we need to use varnish or reconstruct last fragments. this step differs from case the case. not all paintings require clearance, works or further restoration. so consolidation is the most important step. it is okay to begin. one thing that impresses me is the use of color. sometimes colors. ready can be found like they were originally what do you do? do you just take a new paint, a new color and put it in there? cuz a trained eye. you would notice,

but i wouldn't notice the difference between the blue that i find in the store today and the blue that was used originally on your slide. some colors are impossible to replicate the, even though we have equivalence for some like synthetic, alter marine for matter, lake and other natural red pigments that were made from bugs and snails. nobody's replicating those processes the day. we replaced them with advanced synthetic materials in the same time. the key is to have a good grasp of the artist, technique, and methods, the pigments that were used, and that helps you find the correct approach, the restoration by imitating the artist as closely as possible. now, we spoke a little bit about this off camera, but you have to go down to the original layer to make sure that you restore a painting down to its original glory if you will. there have been famous examples of people who think that they're doing the right thing and think that they're doing a good job and have jones done tremendous damage to the work. how. how do you

prevent that and does it break your heart when you see those sorts of things? online. lewis loan the garnishment course, sometimes how much you can service spoiled paintings. it often comes to light as the damage is usually obvious. actually, the rule is very simple. here, focus on the loss and don't try to become a co author. a fine aren't, can, server is the can service. first and foremost, we must suppress our creative urge them. we only restore what's lost and respect the art on our work table, who with interference should be reduced to a minimum. our golden rule only do what's necessary. what's the best path to our goal is the path of least impact. what other well is also a great quote from says are a brandy restoration ends where assumption begins, not everybody works by these words. some are so self confident. they say they know what they're doing and they're doing it right. in fact, which purpose as a 100 percent confident is profession is not for them. you should always have a grain of doubt, level of sarcasm. you with that having been said, i'm

a little bit of an artist myself. i. i have the uniform, were dressed the same way. do you think i can try my hand today and we can start, i can work together with you. ha, very various through supervisor. thank you again for taking the time. thank you. now we've spoken with the a restoration artists. they have a very important job in incredibly tense job. what happens if you get a piece that is to damaged it to be restored, or do you keep it in the vaults, or do you keep it for historical reasons? or if the cause of their us show, the decision is made by an expert commission on a case by case basis for the most of each item has. there's an old conservation rule in the venice charter article that says we shouldn't rebuild what's gone. we shall and in part mirror in syria where we're involved in the restoration process,

we often hear that it stop it. it's destroyed. so let it be like though, and we're not crazy. vandal spilled acid over rembrandts. done. i don't know that some parts of it were lost forever on the wound. some suggested we shouldn't do anything which was let it be a monument to vandalism, hadn't she was so, but in fact, it's important to restore it. i found it to the extent of what's possible because it's not about painting a new. we've conserved what we could, unless some parts are damaged beyond repair, but still will be done. it is a masterpiece. even though its appearance has changed every time we have to make this decision, one thing is certain. we mustn't add anything, goes beyond our intrusion must be reversible. then for example, when we add varnish over a big hole is deal we had toner, so the whole doesn't interfere with our perception of was left get these. but this kind of interference must be reversible. that layer should be removable. hello, vehicle fear in the hermitage. our approach to restoration is very conservative. if we never aim to restore a painting to a fresh condition with you,

that would be wrong. then you start on the artist, knew the painting would date and what it would look like in 20 years. that's our take on the issue. it's really quite a conservative one, but we try to restore paintings to let our visitors enjoy them. if the piece is destroyed completely, however, we have to wait. we had some of peter, the grades outfits as well. we have a lot of them in our collection, and their exhibition is coming soon. just some of them were considered damaged beyond repair parish. but new technology rolled in and now they're restored. or even though we didn't add anything to them, just revived and reshape the damaged butts you for the studio. you have said that art and exhibitions are in important cultural dialogue. now that i'm dialogue between countries and has become complicated, let's say, do you think that art can serve as a moderator to help get people talking again, get countries talking again loyal to us,

talking to the stunning national in my opinion, international dialogue will resume through museums and exhibitions, we've been here before during the cold war, in almost the dialogue between museums precedes the re, establishment of diplomatic relationships that the opposite is also true. museum exchange between russia and the united states. discontinued 15 years ago. it was the 1st signal hobbs. nobody knew back then that it was to harold, a new page in our relations, who stood still, dialog continues. we have telecommunications that let us share treasures across our borders. adults, many other exhibition venues also exists. so the interactions won't stop completely . so, and we always try to negotiate any obstacles we encounter iris. there were a lot of them in the past. the home at ashes, history spent 3 revolutions. i. 3 was evacuations, exchanges, and everything in between help with touch that we've been there. we know what to do with what we know our way around, di colonization as well. yes, we have vast experience. and by keeping up our work that also we explore

opportunities to build new bridges with our colleagues on the foundations of burnt once. if my, if it was from us now, museums are kind of like a living organism. they breathe, they need oxygen, and you need freedom. you need a movement so that the people in different countries can see your exhibitions and breathe life into the hermitage. what destinations would you like to take the love of this place to next over curricular scala? as i said before, it's cloud technology lower you even on youtube, virtual tools have so many views. you couldn't even dream of that number of in person visits. as we've learned during the pandemic and that great class, we still have partners that remain accessible to us. like in the gulf states, our twin museum, the law of abu dhabi. for example, if you can't go to the loop these days, but in abu dhabi, the doors are open on. if we have collaboration projects in china,

malaysia and southeast asia, the people who miss out on the opportunity to visit russia with that, we love it much more when people come here or visit our online exhibitions. letters were reluctant to transport. our peace is elsewhere just, it's perilous, too dangerous to take our collections to other countries exhibiting them here or on the internet is much safer use from today. we'll, we'll go professor, thank you very much. it has been an incredibly interesting conversation and a fascinating place, of course. thank you. my pleasure. avenger. ah ah, what are you crazy? oh, yes. or took a look. i lost most of my friends. that did.

i was broken. i wasn't able to make them to save anyone. i did nothing that i met wilson, 2013 and god, what's really in my way to make me start talking to willy waiting for me to the heaven. i'm happy that i'm the find is really little john. you can go to sleep. my mother, he become my new friend. the one was love gonna die or i was he is, i would stay alive. they next to me. if i'm not crazy enough. i'm not gonna make it

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