Hermitage ‘Winter Palace’ Exhibition, One of World’s Top Three Museums, to Debut in Korea in April

According to The Financial News, the first global digital exhibition by The State Hermitage Museum, which is ranked alongside the Louvre Museum and the British Museum as one of the world’s three greatest museums, will be held in Seoul.
Artworks, a company specializing in the arts and entertainment industry, announced on the 28th that it will present “HERMITAGE LiGHT,” a digital exhibition titled “Winter Palace Awakened by Light,” at Oil Tank Culture Park in Mapo District, Seoul, from April 30 to July 31.
Co-hosted by The State Hermitage Museum and Artworks, the exhibition will use an immersive format that digitally recreates the museum in Russia. By faithfully reproducing the interior and exterior of the palace, it allows visitors to appreciate the artworks while feeling as if they have stepped directly into the Winter Palace. Representative works from The State Hermitage Museum are also projected at life size to deepen viewer engagement.
The exhibition will feature around 50 works in total. Key pieces include Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Portrait of Jeanne Samary,” Rembrandt’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” Leonardo da Vinci’s “Madonna of the Carnation,” Claude Monet’s “Haystacks and Field Landscape,” and Henri Émile Benoît Matisse’s “Dance (La Danse).”
The State Hermitage Museum, famous for its Winter Palace, was built in the mid-18th century in the Baroque style. It served as the emperor’s official winter residence and was designed so that life would be possible even in the harsh winters of Saint Petersburg.
As Catherine the Great began storing an extensive collection of artworks gathered from across Europe, the palace developed into the central space for the imperial art collection. Today, it holds more than three million artifacts. Even if a visitor spent one minute on each piece, it would take about six years to see them all.
This exhibition is expected to go beyond a simple cultural and artistic event and could evolve into broader cultural, economic, and social exchanges between Korea and Russia. During the exhibition period, Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of The State Hermitage Museum and a key figure in Russia’s cultural and arts community, is scheduled to visit Korea, raising expectations that the event will serve as a starting point for various discussions.
Yoo Min-seok, CEO of Artworks, said, “It is meaningful to present the first overseas digital exhibition of The State Hermitage Museum, one of the world’s three great museums, here in Korea,” adding, “We hope this special exhibition will convey the unique charm of Russia’s Winter Palace, which is not easy to experience, to many people.”

rsunjun@fnnews.com Yoo Sun-joon Reporter