Virtual Reality, Fabergé Eggs and Photos of Cats: 10 Russian Museums Go Online

To move just click on the target icons, and to read descriptions of the exhibits press the buttons labelled “i”. Among the greatest hits of the Hermitage’s collection are Madonna Litta by Leonardo Da Vinci, Return of the Prodigal Son and Danaë by Rembrandt, Madonna and Child by Raphael, Dance by Matisse and many other works of art that can be found here. In addition, when it went into lockdown, the museum launched a series of live broadcasts on social networks — the program is updated daily on its website.

The Russian Museum also boasts a solid online platform. Here you can take virtual tours of all its branches. In the Mikhailovsky Palace, you will find familiar works of art that all Russians know since childhood: the Ninth Wave by Aivazovsky, the Last day of Pompeii by Bryullov or  Cossacks of Saporog Are Drafting a Manifesto by Repin.

More modern art can be found in the Benoit building: from Portrait of Ida Rubenstein by Serov and Kandinsky’s abstractions to Melting clouds by Eric Bulatov. Don’t miss the opportunity to wander around the most mysterious Palace of the Romanov dynasty — the Mikhailovsky castle of Emperor Paul I. It was here that the murder of the latter ended the exciting era of palace coups d’etat. The museum’s YouTube channel also offers a series of “conversations”: from analysis of Malevich and Serebryakova’s work to a lecture on the role of women in art.

On March 14, Garage became one of the first Russian museums to announce its temporary closure. In the days that followed, the team of the museum prepared an online platform that contains a variety of suggestions for the time of self-isolation from all sorts of texts to podcasts and live broadcasts. Here you can read about the breathing exercises practised by Alla Pugacheva, learn how to make sculptures from toilet paper rolls (if you promise not to follow the example of the Europeans and not to buy it all), or listen to a playlist of “comfortable” music tracks from an anonymous employee of Garage locked in his kitchen.

The Tretyakov gallery also launched a quarantine project. First of all, it is notable for online exhibition tours and lectures. At the moment, lectures about abstract expressionism and the classical avant-garde art movements are already available for viewing. Also on the museum’s website you can find exhibits sorted by period and in most cases accompanied by a clear description. The Tretyakov gallery does not offer its own virtual walking tours, but you can wander around it, as well as around many other museums, using Google Arts & Culture.

Multimedia Art Museum has recently opened a series of exhibitions within the framework of Photobiennale 2020. During the lockdown week due to coronavirus outbreak, the museum offers online tours of these exhibitions, the schedule of which is updated on the website. In addition, we recommend you to study the MAMM project “History of Russia in Photos”, which includes photo collections from more than 200 museums. Here you will find more than 150,000 historical and fine art photographs from the 1840s to 1999. The website presents the photo collection in the form of a timeline and offers selections of photos on a variety of topics. You can look at lost architectural monuments, study the history of fashion of the past centuries, or enjoy hundreds of pictures of cats.

Like Garage, Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg was one of the first cultural venues to voluntarily suspend operations due to the spread of coronavirus. Now the museum offers online lectures on urgent topics in the current context: the meaning of freedom, stress and anxiety. Yeltsin Center also organizes a series of online screenings of films that have participated in the “Artdokfest” festival over the years. You can find the current events guide here.