Art and Authority: The Hermitage of Catherine the Great KATIA DIANINA Kings are like statues; people examine them with so minute an attention that their smallest faults, magnified by criticism, cause the most rare and genuine merits to be forgotten. Marquis de Custine CATHERINE: What is our business for today? NARYSHKIN: The new museum, Little Mother. But the model will not be ready until tonight. CaTHERINE [rising eagerly]: Yes, the museum. An enlightened capital should have a museum. [She paces the chamber with a deep sense of the importance of the museum.] It shall be one of the wonders of the world. I must have specimens: specimens, specimens, specimens. Bernard Shaw, Great Catherine T here is a memorable scene in Aleksandr Sokurov’s recent film about the Hermitage, Russian Ark (2002), which portrays Catherine the Great at the Hermitage Theater enjoying a dress rehearsal in the company of her courtiers. “So?” asks the empress as the play comes to a conclusion, and herself responds, “I say, it’s good. Very good.” Obviously quite at home among performers and spectators alike, the empress makes a quick dash for the lavatory, while Marquis de Custine, the film’s skeptical guide through the museum’s galleries, remarks in a sarcastic aside that all of Russia is akin to a theater, too. The next episode devoted to Catherine’s rule again represents the Russian empress amidst everyday activities, showing her as she hurries (not without affect) through the Winter Garden from one building of the Hermitage complex to the next. Unlike more familiar narratives of the world-famous collection of art, which Catherine the Great founded in 1764, the film highlights certain quotidian episodes in the museum’s history and underscores an apparent theatricality that distinguished its routine. In its early days, the renowned Hermitage was hardly the museum as we know it today. It was many other things, instead: Catherine’s residential quarters, the site of her I would like to thank Marcus Levitt, David Brandenberger, Julia Bekman Chadaga, and the two anonymous readers at The Russian Review for their critical insights at earlier stages of this project. The Russian Review 63 (October 2004): 630–54 Copyright 2004 The Russian Review