a with artificial intelligence, with obama protect its own existence with who a at the end of the 18th century, britain began the illegal opium trade in china. this hard drug causing addiction and literally destroying the human body became a gold mine for business men from the foggy albion. however, the ruling chinese jing dynasty tried to resist and to stop the illegal trade, which provoked the wrath of the london business community. in 1840 without

a declaration of war, the english fleet began to seize and plunder chinese coastal forts. the barley, armed and morally drained chinese army, was unable to provide adequate resistance. the jing empire was forced to hand hong kong over to england and open it sports for trading the lethal good. in 1856, france and the united states joined in the robbery of china. the anglo french troops defeated the chinese occupied beijing and committed an unprecedented robbery . destroyed and blundered, the wealth of the un mean you and palace, the defeat of the jing dynasty and the do opium wars lead to the transformation of the celestial empire into a semi colony of european states and started it's age of humiliation and the sale of opium took on colossal proportions and lead to the horrible deaths of millions

of ordinary chinese. ah, is your media a reflection of reality? ah, in the world transformed what will make you feel safer? isolation or community? ah, you going the right way? where are you being that somewhere die right? what is true was his faith in the world corrupted. you need to descend a. ready join us in the depths or remain in the shallows.

ah, museums are important for preserving our history so that it is 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, but how much in st. petersburg we help ruskie is the director here and i bet he has masters. ah, the student of history is always a energy that resides in the physical space of the energy that resides in paintings. that energy cannot be fully conveyed through technology. there's the restoration and what assumptions begins. do you think i can try my hand to today? i'm very,

very strict supervisor at the hematologist or a 2 types of question that a forbidden why i wear my scarf all the time. and what's my favorite painting professor? it's ruskie nice to you. thank you very much for hosting us here. i'm basically, ah, this is the hermitage. you've been the director here for 30 years. the world has changed a lot in this time. or what is the hermitage, or how has the hermitage changed along with it? or what 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 it, an entire complex of facilities, including the new buildings on palace square. as a result, we've doubled our exhibition space where we, we've also opened a storage facility at hermitage, stereo, that is near that old village. finally, which we've established a number of satellite museums. governments are previously, we had home at our satellites in russia and all around the world was even for now, only the russian branches are active with us. well, the hermitage is a modern high tech museum with a global presence 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 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. and we don't offer interpretations of what every person learns different things from different sources. what makes our museum great is that while we have our own viewpoint would be let everyone tell their story the way they want to tell it is similar. let me give you an example of jeff. we are 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. we've also got paintings of the battle of betters enough. they tell the story of napoleon fleeing russia for doing this and 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 led napoleon the old guard get away. ok, 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 events. i can see like 3 d exhibits, v r. um, 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 hematologist? that much of what we do involves cloud technology performance? well, this is especially relevant today, just as russia finds itself in an intellectual and cultural blockade level. so everything we do ends up in the cloud. now you don't have to physically come to the home starts 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. what 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 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? observed effect visits? loaner absolutely. with physical museums will always be around. you can talk all you want about cutting edge technology, but the energy that resides in the physical space of 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 regularly. this is the duke of wellington, but he served as a russian field marshal, so he's up there. but 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 rob, but it still comes down to people for 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 world. no 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 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 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, you okay, that was a special committee that looks at the item and 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 if it's 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 that we had better paintings by davinci, his watcher. and we also have better paintings from the same school of painting. in fact, we even have a better salvador 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. that will typically the item is not some over hyped painting. but a specific work of art that the hermitage would benefit from love number in the number of a 1000 you mentioned, what does the hermitage need, or what does 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 hotel bridge. now that's a taboo question. at the hermitage, there are 2 types of questions that are forbidden for why i where my scarf all the time and what 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. understand it lists all the pieces i personally chosen, and those aren't my personal favorites. are you just the ones i suggest? every one should see to better understand what the hermitage has to offer. in school. now we know that the hermitage has large vaults, a huge collection in 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 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. and 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 at all. over many years, we have built a large complex of open storage facilities called thermometers. daria derived near 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 are specialists with the works of articles and which was little

we went to the study, i did have now restoration and storage center for ourselves to see where age warn masterpieces get a new life larry, what you're doing is incredibly interesting. thank you for taking the time to speak with us. so 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 logo showing as you are right, there are lots of similarities between medicine, then 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 rich and 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 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 except uniform than him from practical ocean, with the city of mania. so 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 tipping provided as well? 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 before treatment is required at the hermitage. we have exhibits that have

had a troubled history. they've survived the wars and all sorts of the painting. i'm restoring right now is by yon privet stay 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 art works were destroyed. this painting was hidden behind the church wall in brouge from it remained for the 230 years and was discovered by accident that off from the french, destroyed the cathedral or from that supernatural china while i'm not ah, what is the if i may ask the most a damaged painting that you've 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. 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 over the painted over. when is a changed drastically in accordance with the trends if it were anything like that, hopefully our goal is to restore the original appearance intended by the author of 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 from. oh, never 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 you have, 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 today. 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? fear 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 loss fragments. this step differs from case to case. not all paintings require clearance, works or further restoration. so consolidation is the most important step it okay to begin. one thing that impresses me is the use of color. 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. garnish law, some colors are impossible to replicate the even though we have equivalence for some, like ask, synthetic, alter marine for matter. lake and other natural red pigments that were made from bugs and snails. nobody's replicating those processes today. we replaced them with advanced synthetic materials. 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 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. um, how do you prevent that and does it break your heart when you see those sorts of things online? through the floor like unusual, and course, sometimes amateur 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 a 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,

who 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 i thought it was also a great quote from says are a brand is progress, duration 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, for parents as a 100 percent confident, as profession is not for them, you should always have a grain of doubt. level of success. 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 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 and assure 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 michelle and in palmera or 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, though to some parts of it, were lost forever. well, in the winter, some suggested we shouldn't do anything. we just 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, what 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 a 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. go and our intrusion must be reversible then for example, when we add vanish over a big hole deal, we had toner. so the whole doesn't interfere with our perception of what's left. this kind of interference must be reversible. that layer should be removable. hello vehicles here 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 new, 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 within a studio. and you have said that art and exhibitions are important to 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 him get people talking again, get countries talking again. loyal to us. look at the sterling national. in my opinion, international dialogue will resume through museums and exhibitions. we've been here before, during the cold war, enormous was 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 that 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 exist. so the interactions won't stop completely just, 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 with 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 was 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 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 gulliver, 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's great, she wasn't even 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 with that we love it much more when people come here or visit our online exhibitions. russia were reluctant to transport. our peace is elsewhere just it's perilous. too dangerous to take our collections to other countries or exhibiting them here or on the internet is much safer. reviews on should i will go 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

ah a trigger the general. yeah. okay. that means national government can pump into the economy as much as a $22.00 in a month and get it to us on to that at all. with my son, he died in the city sick at sickle. miyoshi, stan, my son, he started on monday. the financial due to this visit for me, i need to just do this. and he said, i got me for the presets on phone. go out for a 3

digit. not sure if this will be 2. i know you're very much him of a book. they model christie, but not the corporate funnel with dawn last last you know, ah, that last has got some kind on a bombing, their own good perception that even a and he'll get. they are putting the lensky of the hero and bringing him in every every seattle for life, but they are giving him the opportunity to share his views. not only in forums and summits, but also in the universities add to the young people are making a president and as a villain, but that is definitely not the gates. and how do you know that he understand what

is good for their nation, all which is good for you'd see with ah, a tim, you told me the focus, you could hit that we're having an issue. the, i mean, you're right on my like i said that it will be that your most in place. i work with low startled iowa. eat all the way. so yeah, this place that people come from one water course close to them and be titled, i mean i had major was hello, sit with you last as lynn has been more in the school, almost now than the the 2nd man is what process i see. all case.