"Old Masters from the State Hermitage Museum" Exhibition Brings Russia's Treasured Art Collection to Japan Next Spring!

Nippon Television Network Corporation (Nippon TV) is honored to announce that it has signed an agreement with the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia on July 7, 2016 to bring the exhibition "Old Masters from the State Hermitage Museum" to Japan beginning in March 2017.

Exhibition agreement signing, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, July 7, 2016
From left, Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, and Yoshio Okubo, Representative Director and President of Nippon TV

The State Hermitage Museum, one of the world's three great museums, was founded in 1764 by
Empress Catherine II (1729-1796, reigned 1762-1796) as part of her aggressive cultural policy to collect works of art to be housed next to her palace. Hermitage is the French word for "secluded home."
Having survived upheavals such as the Russian Revolution, the museum's collection has continued to grow, currently holding three million pieces. From Renaissance to modern art, the collection is known the world over for holding paintings of the highest quality across eras and countries.

Nippon TV brought "The Stage Hermitage Museum Exhibition" to Japan in 2006 and 2012, giving over 1.42 million people the opportunity to relish the collection. Nippon TV is the only organization in recent years to hold an exhibition that exclusively features paintings from the museum.
The upcoming third exhibition gathers pieces from the 17th and 18th century Baroque and Rococo paintings, the finest and largest among the museum's collections, and brings the spotlight on the "Old Masters."
"Old Masters from the State Hermitage Museum" will exhibit 85 oil paintings from the museum's core collection of "Old Masters" such as Tiziano, Rembrandt, Zurbarán, Boucher and Fragonard, categorized into their respective countries and regions. No other exhibition features as many paintings by the great masters in a single venue.

The exhibition begins next spring in Tokyo, followed by Nagoya and Kobe. Unbounded by the eras and regions in which they were created, the masterpieces will surely fascinate visitors to next year's "Old Masters from the State Hermitage Museum."

   

Nippon Television Network Corporation
President's Office, Public Relations