December 8, 2014. Yekaterinburg Fine Arts Museum is going to re-create the office occupied by the Hermitage Museum employees during the war evacuation period. The city council says the local authorities are quite interested in having a culture/education center called the Hermitage-Urals here.

‘This project will be financially difficult to implement. Nevertheless, thanks to the city council and the fine arts museum’s efforts, a reconstruction of the building will begin, and additional space will be provided for museum depositories,’ the city council’s press service says.

Head of Yekaterinburg Council Alexander Yakob is going to come to Saint Petersburg at the weekend in order to join a solemn ceremony dedicated to the State Hermitage Museum’s 250th anniversary.

The Hermitage-Urals subsidiary is expected to open in 2016, in time for Yekaterinburg Fine Arts Museum’s 80th anniversary.

‘As is well known, the Hermitage collections had to be dispatched to (then) Sverdlovsk on two secret trains during the Great Patriotic War. These were stored at the museum at 11 Vainer St for nearly five years. Over two million exhibits were taken care of in this city for four years, which couldn’t but affect the museum industry in Yekaterinburg quite noticeably. The Hermitage’s leading art experts, historians, and archaeologists did research on the Urals, delivered lectures and seminars, and cooperated with the local museums. The Hermitage-Urals will be housed in the museum exhibitions halls where evacuated exhibits were actually kept during wartime. The office where the Hermitage employees worked during the war evacuation period will be re-created based on drawings and photographs,’ says Yekaterinburg Fine Arts Museum Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Developments Yulia Sirina.