NEW YORK/ST. PETERSBURG.- On June 19–20 2002, the first meeting of the Trusteeship Council of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was held at the State Hermitage where the establishment of the philanthropic Hermitage-Guggenheim Foundation was announced by Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Thomas Krens, Chairman of the Trusteeship Council of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Peter Lewis and head of the Interros holding company Vladimir Potanin. The primary goal of the newly established foundation is to provide financial support and implement joint projects of the Hermitage and Guggenheim in the spheres of art, architecture, design and education. Vladimir Potanin, head of the Interros holding company , was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Hermitage-Guggenheim Foundation and Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Thomas Krens was appointed its Executive Director. The headquarters of the foundation are to be located in New York.

The Hermitage-Guggenheim Foundation intends to oversee collaborative projects between the two institutions, notably the renovation of the 400,000-square-foot, 19th-century General Staff Building across from the Hermitage on Palace Square. The General Staff building is to become a multi-functional museum complex that will house museum galleries as well as entertainment and commercial centers for residents and visitors of St Petersburg. The study will cover such problems as functioning of the new museum complex, arrangement of its collections, design of spaces for exhibitions, estimation of the expenditures, budget and profitability and finding potential partners.

Cooperation of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the State Hermitage is based on the Long-term Collaboration Agreement signed by the museums in June 2000. The broad strategic objectives of the alliance are to make each museum’s respective collections accessible to broader audiences; to share resources; to implement joint exhibition, publishing, and educational initiatives, internet activities; and to facilitate each institution’s long-term goals. The first concrete example and result of the partnership was the creation of the Hermitage-Guggenheim exhibition center in Las Vegas. Its first exhibition “Masterpieces and Their Collectors: 19th- and 20th-Century European Painting from the Collections of the State Hermitage and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation” was opened in October 2001 and featured 45 works from the collections of the two museums.