will take into account the national interests of our country. and finally, this news, our head of a key, russia, africa conference set for next month. and busters, from a range of african countries, there, here in moscow, the talk increased cooperation. we be hearing on the program over the hours from various representatives. let's listen to equitorial guineas. who believes that continence ties with russia is only going to grow. going into the future. got bashfully cecile, with someone. the ussr collapsed russia. me looked to the west and forgot about africa, and we all know that the independence of africa is the merits of the u. s. i saw because in order to be independent, you need to be educated, and the u. s. hassan gave us this opportunity. i'm a candidate of economic sciences. i am an ambassador, but this is thanks to the education i was given. russia has made this commitment in today all african countries. welcome this initiative, this assistance. because this is the most important thing for us. as for business,

there is almost no russian business day in africa, but we're waiting for russia, and we now welcome the fact that russia is returning to africa. okay, next we're going into a parts of russia's most famous museum that few ever get to see where all the restorations are. don, host sean thomas. he will take us all, not journey now, and i'll see you again at the top. this is our t international life. mm ah as us on the west ukraine proxy war on russia is not going as planned. a new narrative is making the rounds. it's called the korea solution, the end of act of hostilities and an armistice. keep in mind, the side considering an armistice, seeks to avoid complete defeat. we all know which side that is

ah museums are important for preserving our history so that it is lost to future generations. but our physical museums, places themselves a relic of the past. this is one of the best museums in the world, but from a touch in st. petersburg, we help thrust he's the director here and i bet he has some answers ah suited your history is always biased. 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 strict supervisor. at the hematologist, there are 2 types of question that are forbidden. why i where my scarf all the time and what's my favorite painting professor, it's ruskin. nice to you. thank you very much for hosting us here. so 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 close 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 home at i started to live near. that's 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, are based on their own agendas or how do you keep ah, history, some being changed so that you can so that it is non biased and so that it is as

impartial, no, is fluidity, can uber 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. what every person learns different things from different sources. that are what makes our museum great is that while we have our own viewpoint from which we let everyone tell their story the way they want to tell it, i'm similar. let me give you an example of jeff. we're about to enter the gallery dedicated to the patriotic war of 1812. there are 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 other 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 the old guard get away for. 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 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, if that much of what we do involves cloud technology formative. well, this is especially relevant today, just as russia finds itself in an intellectual and cultural blockade, justin mcgill, and also everything we do, ends up in the cloud. now you don't have to physically come to the home stars to discover its treasures. it's 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. if you 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 like regardless of the change in technology, all the more so because modern digital technology takes away from the article, it's not something that everyone understands, but a digital picture is often worse than its analog counterpart. the same way a vinyl record is better than a digital record. stepping into a room like this,

this hallway is just magnificent. you can feel the history here. or is it safe 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. the energy that resides in paintings that energy cannot be fully conveyed through technology, social work. yes, technology is useful, but that's it. here we have some portraits of men who fought in the war against napoleon regularly. 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 . we've got equipment that provides detailed information about every work of art, but it wasn't, this is one of the ways technology can help us on that. but it still comes down to people for many o m 's 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 to 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 law? apparently. 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 or the can 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 to ship 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 sponsors 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 love, none in the number with ever. you mentioned what does the hermitage need or what is

the hermitage that you really, really want 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 not 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 with the painting. wasn't that good either, that you just can't get your hands on quality art in the when it comes to 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 for 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 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 middle of the bridge. now that's a taboo question. her at the hermitage, there are 2 types of question that are forbidden for why i wear 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 in school . now we know that her 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 on how much do you have available to the public percentage with russia duck?

that's not the right way to look at it. bureau 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. 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 museums. that's where your figure comes from. it's usually 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 her mottos star. i had the revenue that 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 the works of art overall,

which was we went to the store yet did 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? move the polish the lagoon is that you are right. there are lots of similarities between medicine and restoration. young. we have similar instruments and do 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 vision book. 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 fields except unicorn than him from practical shooter fios than 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. in 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, and there were an iconic campaigns and many artworks were destroyed. this painting was hidden behind the church wall in brouge from it remained for the 230 years and was discovered by accident uh from the french destroyed the cathedral philip 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 produced 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 here, washed out and over as painted over. when is the changed drastically in accordance with the trends, if at or anything like that for our goal is to restore the original appearance intended by the author against 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 of 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. there. you have, i think you will have this opportunity after you studied 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 today. andre, thank you very much for meeting with us today. ah, the work you do 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? for which 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 lost fragments. this step differs from case to case. not all paintings require clearance, works or further restoration. so consolidation is the most important step, is it okay to begin? one thing that impresses me is the use of color, or sometimes colors can be found that like they were originally. um, what do you do? do you just take a new paint, a new color and put it in there, cause a trained eye? you would notice, but i wouldn't notice the difference between the blue that i find in the store today in the blue that was used originally on your slide. some colors are impossible to replicate the, even though we have equivalence for some like us, synthetic, alter marine for mad a lake and other natural red pigments that were made from bugs and snails. nobody's replicating those processes today. we replace them with advanced synthetic materials, you know, 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 or how do you prevent that and does it break your heart when you see those sorts of things online through the floor like unusual of course, sometimes how much you can service spoil 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 1st and foremost from what 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 without. it was also a great quote from says i brandy restoration ends where the assumption begins. not everybody works by these words. it some are so self confident, they say they know what they're doing and they're doing it right. yes. but in fact, we propose as a 100 percent confident as profession is not for them. you should always have a grain of doubt. level of sarcasm. he was 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 things supervisor and i thank you again for taking the time. thank you . now we've spoken with the restoration artists.

ah, 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 i do keep it for historical reasons or if the cause of their us a show, the decision is made by an expert commission on a case by case basis over the course of each item has, there's an old conservation rule in the venice charter article that says we shouldn't rebuild what's gone with us. and in pal 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 we're not crazy. vandal spilled acid over rembrandts. danny, don't know, some parts of it were lost forever on the wound. some suggested we shouldn't do anything which has let it be a monument. to vandalism have an issue or so, but in fact, it's important to restore it or found it to the extent of what's possible work as well. it's not about painting a new, we've conserved what we could, unless some parts are damaged beyond repair. but still movie jenny is

a masterpiece. even though its appearance has changed every time we have to make this decision, one thing is certain, if we mustn't add anything, goes beyond our intrusion must be reversible. then for example, when we add vanish over a big hole, it's gyla, we had toner, so the whole doesn't interfere with our perception that was left. this kind of interference must be reversible. that layer should be removable hello, visit the fair in the hermitage. our approach to restoration is very conservative. if we never aim to restore a painting to a fresh condition with human, 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 summer, peter, the grades outfits as well. we have a lot of them in our collection and their exhibition is coming soon. which of 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 reshaped the damaged butts. you have had a studio. and you have said that art and exhibitions are important to cultural dialogue. now that a dialogue between countries and has become complicated, let's say do you think that art can serve as a moderator to help him get people talking again get countries talking again lawyer . the wish luka though sterling, the child, in my opinion, international dialogue, will resume through museums and exhibitions. we've been here before or during the cold war in almost was the dialogue between museums precedes the re, establishment of diplomatic relationships that, that got the opposite is also true. museum exchange between russia and the united states. discontinued 15 years ago when it was the 1st signal, absolutely, 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 to close of the interactions won't stop completely so, and we always try to negotiate any obstacles we encounter this. there were a lot of them in the past. the hermitage, his history spent 3 revolutions, 3 was evacuations, exchanges, and everything in between help approach that we've been there. we know what to do with what we know our way around, di colonization as well. we have vast experience and by keeping up our work, but also we explore opportunities to build new bridges with our colleagues was on the foundations of burnt ones. 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 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? we're going to kill us. go, as i said before, it's cloud technology. we've, 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's great. okay, the last we still have partners that remain accessible to us. like in the gulf states are 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 this. we have collaboration projects in china, malaysia, and southeast asia. the people who miss out on the opportunity to visit russia. we love it much more when people come here or visit our online exhibitions. we are reluctant to transport our peace is elsewhere, just perilous, too dangerous to take our collections to other countries. exhibiting them here or on the internet is much safer to use a local professor. thank you very much. it has been an incredibly interesting

conversation and a fascinating place, of course. thank you. my pleasure. thank you. ah, blue in at this hour, american and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm iraq, to free its people. and to defend the world from great with we will bring to the iraqi people, food and medicine in supplies. and freedom with

ah, yes, yes. now i can you media if it's deploy box? yes, sir, to nancy. you know them. lucky on the new book is up probably the natalie. she's the radiator young showcase in there and let them know that sounds good to the boys at w boy. ah ah,

what would be the one that's near that'll get caught up in my chair. this is, laura doesn't want that much extra mom, but i know it's up a minute. whole time got some kind. aha, i mean, no, well, bombing, their own good perception, and he'll get, they are putting a, not only important in some ways, but also in the universities add to the young people, i making a villain. but that is definitely not the case. and how do you know that he understands what is good for damnation, which is good for people ah

ah ah, disturbing images ahead. russia opens a criminal investigation into the brutal execution of russian prisoners of war by ukrainian troops. the un office verified the footage as authentic as express deep concern over the slave with washington. accused of double standards after stopping new sanctions on a run targeting fuel of petrochemical, sold to asia, while at the same time saying it won't take action against the india for buying russian or nicaragua releases more than 200 jail cool plotters who.