On 21 February 2021, the Hermitage and Maison Cartier held an international online conference entitled “Art Dialogues: Living Heritage and Inspiring Future” in the General Staff building that was timed to coincide with the opening of the exhibition “Cartier: Passing on Heritage and Savoir-Faire. Masterpieces from the Hermitage Museum and Cartier Collection”.
Prominent professionals and international experts – more than 20 speakers from around the world – came together in a mixed format, offline and online, to discuss the topic of “living heritage” and the importance of continuity between generations. They spoke about tendencies and new formats in art, transformations in opera, cinema, theatre and ballet. The participants also touched upon the subject of the digital and technological facets of fashion, architecture, the blockchain and tomorrow’s art market.
The conference was opened by Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, and Cyrille Vigneron, President and CEO of Cartier. Other participants in the first block on “Living Heritage and Continuity between Generations” were Pierre Rainero, Cartier's Image and Heritage Director, and Laurent Salomé, Director of the National Museum of the Versailles and Trianon Palaces. The moderators for this block were Yanina Novitskaya, Managing Director of Cartier in Russia, Ukraine and the CIS, and Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the State Hermitage’s Department of Contemporary Art and of the Hermitage 20/21 project.
“We are speaking today about the art of the future and about past history,” Mikhail Piotrovsky said in his welcome speech. “The General Staff links those two concepts and that is why we are still thinking about a name for this part of the museum. This building is a sort of laboratory, where we ponder on how to develop the museum and where we receive guests of the most varied kinds. Today we are conducting a interesting experiment: we have become used to online conferences, but it is far better to meet face to face offline. The whole of life has become a hybrid form. We are developing a system of hybrid conferences, a sort of bridge between past and present. I am eagerly looking forward to an interesting and, perhaps, divergent discussion.”
Cyrille Vigneron pointed out that it is important to preserve not only material cultural heritage, but also ideas and the people who create that heritage. “We need to preserve dialogues, communication, to support relations between people and organizations from different countries. We should not only look to the past but also create its link with the present –not only preserve but also use. If we cease to create something new, the old things will become covered with dust. And in order to accomplish this, we need to maintain links with one another,” the President of Cartier said.
The participants in the first session of the conference continued the discussion of matters relating to cultural heritage and its preservation, what will disappear and what will remain for future generations. In order to preserve cultural heritage, it is necessary to connect it with the present and to project into the future. How, though, should we be working with the cultural valuables of the past in the 21st century? What does “stable development” mean when applied to living heritage? What can we pass on to the next generations and in what form? And will digitalization be of help in this?
The participants in the three following blocks of the conference were:
Hervé Chandès, Director of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
Alber Elbaz, Creative Director of AZ Factory
Golshifteh Farahani, Iranian theatre and cinema actress, participant in the environmental protection movement
Mélanie Laurent, French theatre director and actress, participant in the environmental protection movement
Junya Ishigami, Japanese architect, founder of junya.ishigami+associates, author of the plan for the reconstruction of the Polytechnical Museum in Moscow
Diana Vishneva, People’s Artist of the Russian Federation, prima ballerina of the Mariinsky Theatre, founder and artistic director of the international festival of contemporary choreography Context. Diana Vishneva
Stefano Boeri, Italian architect and city-planner, President of the Fondazione Triennale Milano, architect of the Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) in Milan
Solano Benítez, Paraguayan architect, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2016 Venice Biennale
Jason Bailey, founder of the Internet platform Artnome.com
Anita Gigovskaya, President of Condé Nast Russia
Nanne Dekking, Founder and CEO of Artory LLC, New York, and Artory GmbH, Berlin, member of the board of the Hermitage in Amsterdam Foundation
Sarah Sze, American contemporary artist and sculptor
Yekaterian Inozemtseva, Head Curator of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
Teodor Currentzis, Founder and Artistic Director of the MusicAeterna orchestra and choir
Varvara Melnikova, General Director of the Strelka Institute of Media, Architecture and Design
A video of the conference is available on the Hermitage’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5oEIfojso
