The Hermitage Amsterdam was established as an independent nonprofit in 2009, with ‘unlimited rights’ to borrow works from the State Hermitage Museum’s collection in St. Petersburg. Yet in March 2020, a week after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the Amsterdam museum cut ties with the Russian museum, its namesake and sole collaborator, in protest over Russia’s actions.
The Hermitage Amsterdam’s final collaboration with the Hermitage St. Petersburg was an exhibition titled Russian Avant-Garde: Revolution in the Arts; originally scheduled to be on display for a year, it closed after just five weeks in 2020 at an estimated cost of $2 million. Since then, Dutch museums have stepped in to temporarily loan some of their star works in gestures of solidarity, while the museum was able to raise almost $1 million through crowdfunding.
Now the museum is rebranding as H’Art, and has announced their plan to work with a new group of partner museums: the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C.; the Centre Pompidou in Paris; and the British Museum in London. The Pompidou will collaborate on five exhibitions over five years, starting in 2024 with a show of Wassily Kandinsky works from the French museum’s collection. The partnership will coincide with the Pompidou’s estimated five-year closure for renovations from 2025.
The Smithsonian and the British Museum will work with H’Art Museum on three exhibitions each over the next six years, with the full schedule to be released later this year. ‘We’re going to be like a museum for museums,” stated H’Art’s director Annabelle Birnie. ‘Three partners will bring you a lot more than one.’
