Imperial Russia New museum in Amsterdam

[Roeland]

Hello gents,

in Amsterdam (The Netherlands, Europe) a new museum will be opened this evening.

The museum is called ''De Hermitage'' and is located in the old renovated building Amstelhof (used to be a home for the elder people), located at the Amstel.

site(in Dutch): http://www.hermitage.nl/nl/

It will be a dependance of the hermitage in St. Petersburg (Russia) http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/.

From tomorrow until 31 January 2010 you can visit the first exibition called ''Aan het Russische hof'' (''at the Russian court'') and tells the tale of the wealthy life and many strict rules at the Russian court of the Tsars. More than 1800 objects will be shown.

Including many army uniforms and orders.

The pictures proof to be very promissing: http://www.hermitage.nl/nl/tentoonstelling...ldmateriaal.htm

following pictures are from the site, copyright of Stichting Hermitage, at the Amstel:

I'm sure I'm going to visit the museum.

kind regards,

Roeland

[Claudius]

Hallo Roeland,

I can only speak for myself when I say that I am very envious of your pending visit to the new museum.

Please inform us of what you find, photos if possible, overall impressions at a minimum.

dank u en de goede jacht

Claudius

[Elmar Lang]

Hello,

it will surely be an interesting exhibition, although I think that these "openings" of foregin sections of famous museums (see the "louvre" in Dubai, for instance) have a commercial, rather than cultural motivation.

From what I can see from the posted pictures, I can say that the Maltese Order's cross is not an old piece, but a modern, Italian-made one, dating from the early '60s of 20th Century.

I hope that the paintings on exhibition wouldn't be good scans of the originals...

Best wishes,

Elmar Lang

Edited August 11, 2009 by Elmar Lang

[Roeland]

Hello gents,

I've made a visit to the museum last month. It was fantastic!!!

Really worth visiting.

They have a lot of uniforms, those of the imperial staff from the palaces, officers, imperial guards, but also uniforms worn by czars themselves.

Also there are a lot of (huge) paintings from high ranking officers, the czars and family etc.

The exibition is about the life at the Russian imperial court. You get to see many different subjects, such as the masked balls (costumes, vejers, money purses, bags etc.), paintings of the palaces and guards, children and their uniforms, jewelry, womens fashion (dresses, hats, earings etc.), music and numerous other items (vazes, piano, throne etc.).

Although I did see the dress on the picture above, I believe it was taken in Russia, as the old style stairs are not present. However, the museum still is very beautiful and has a great modern look (no wonder as it has just been opened). I didn't see any orders and medals though except on painting, perhaps I missed a hall.

They also have a gift shop, where you can buy all kind of books, postcards, but also faberge eggs and even candeliers.

negative points:

Loads of old people.

Don't be bothered by the many anoying old people who think that the objects look less if you see an object before them and push you aside in their hurry to beat you (really happend to me several times).

I also heard a lot of ''experts'' where present, for example: 1 lady was reading the text next tot a dress and said it was made in Paris, the other women said that she knew that of course, she had clearly seen that already by looking at it. And she really talked loud so that everyone the room heard it and with a fake-rich people accent(don't know how to describe it, but those show off people who want to join the club), quite anoying and those people where even often wrong in describing items.

Also, I missed ''the story''. The objects had signs, often only describing the title/name of the object, sometimes what place and when it was made.

I really wanted that there was more of a story to it. For example, it is nice to see all kind of dresses, masks, objects and uniforms for the masked balls, but it would have been nice if there was a description about masked balls itself (the tradition, political importance etc.). Or even more information on the development/history of an object itself. But still, for people who know a bit about 19th century history and/or Czarist Russian history, it is quite undertandable what you see, for the others it is a real festival of beautiful items from (mostly) the19th century.

Tip: make sure you are there on time.

I came there 15 minutes before it was open, and there already was a small queing line, in 10 minutes, the line behind me went around the corner of the building.

When I came out of the museum 1,5 hours later, there was a waiting time of almost 1 hour before people could enter the museum.

It is a huge museum, so if you are on time, you won't notice it is very busy as you are ahead of the most visitors.

My exit was also my grand finally. I had shoes with leather soles (quite slippery on certain floors), as I was walking past the old people standing in line to enter, I fel of the stairs, of course the crowd was yelling/screaming, but I was fine (only my pride was hurt).

overall, really worth visiting.

I wasn't alloud to take pictures, but I'll see if I can make some scans from the book about the exibition.

kind regards,

Roeland

Edited September 13, 2009 by Roeland