A museum-educational program started in the “Hermitage-Kazan” center in Kazan

A press-conference on presentation of hermitage lecture-hall and educational computer center took place in the “Hermitage-Kazan” museum-educational center. A new museum academic year full of meetings, lectures, lessons, and excursions begins in State Hermitage on October 1.

“Hermitage-Kazan” center should become Hermitage in miniature, developing guidance and enlightening activity based on the successful exhibition center. The very idea of creating Hermitage center in Kazan is supposed to lift Kazan museums to the level of Hermitage. As the State Hermitage exhibition deputy director Vladimir Matveyev puts it, the center must be something more than a mere exhibition center, it should carry out educational and guidance activities.

He understands pretty well, that Kazan is a city of students, and they lay emphasis in their activity on student audience. Vladimir Matveyev reports, that the second in significance and maybe the first in numbers is school audience. He also underlined “Hermitage-Kazan” center is to become a center of professional promotion for museum employees and spread its influence on other bordering regions. The deputy director also drew attention to necessity of attracting schoolchildren, citizens of other Tatarstan towns and even villagers to the center.

Lectures started in the lecture-hall of the “Hermitage-Kazan” center. It is supposed that there will be 5 of them in the academic year 2005-2006, namely “Hermitage. The pages of history”, “East in Saint Petersburg”, “Russia: east-and-west reflected in the hermitage collections”, “Masterpieces of world culture in Hermitage”, and “The Golden horde - steppe civilization”. Lectures will be going on during 2 terms each in 3 sessions. 2 specialists will be arriving to Kazan for each session and giving lectures.

The educational computer center offers visitors multimedia programs based on the Hermitage collections, including “The history of ancient painting”, “Wonderful mechanisms”, “the Knight times” and others. The video-hall of the “Hermitage-Kazan” center is intended for carrying out scientific meetings and selective videoconferences.