Apparently, if a person spends one minute in front of every artwork in the Hermitage, it would take 33 years to see the whole museum.
I am 33.
Day one: Volunteering at the Hermitage, 04/02/2010
-I was asked if I would like to prepare a booklet on the Hermitage volunteer service
-Packing children's art
-Standing at the entrance welcoming guests, answering questions and asking them to take their coats to the 'gadyerob' or cloakroom (obligatory), challenging as I have only beginner's Russian.
It went well.
-Walking round the gallery with another volunteer, who reminds me of the main character from Russian Ark, but a female version. Perhaps it's the way she walks with her hands behind her back. She hasn't seen the film, so she isn't pretending to be him. The Rembrandt room was special, full of his soul.
-Snow covers all the buildings and people frantically scrape ice and snow from the rootops and the pavements.
-The Russians I have met are so kind. Even the woman in the phone shop wants me to go back to visit her.
-Tomorrow I will start to take photos and to consider the theme of my next urban project...
I have overcome my initial fears that I am truly mad. The ultimate 'what the .... am I doing here' is one hundred percent (option), it's fantastic!
Mural project
6 years ago
Its absolutely not mad to go to a different city where they speak a different language to do a different job. Its LIVING! I did it when I was 17; went to Switzerland for a year as a nanny for a family I'd never met, in a part of the country where they speak Swiss-German (which is incomprehensible to Germans... not that my German was even passable anyway). It was hard, but I wouldn't change it.
ReplyDeleteI would LOVE to see that Rembrandt room. Any of his self-portraits there? Extraordinary, soul-searing.