A signing ceremony was held at the State Tretyakov Gallery on Thursday to launch a new joint master's program between the Gallery and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT).
The new program, “Science and Digitalization for the Cultural Heritage,” will work at the intersection of art, culture and the hard sciences. General Director of the Tretyakov Gallery Zelfira Tregulova and the rector of MIPT Dmitry Livanov represented their respective organizations.
“The agreement we have signed today,” said Tregulova, “is a historic step in carrying out complex research in artwork preservation and restoration.” The new program will aim to further research in these fields using state-of-the-art chemical, physical and data-driven techniques to maintain the more than 200,000 works of art in the Tretyakov Gallery’s collection.
Both parties are very positive about the future of the program, which is already underway with young chemists involved in the joint venture.
They hope that this will not only help study and preserve the Moscow collection, but also works held in St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, and other regions of Russia.
During the coronavirus lockdown in late 2020, all of the Gallery’s exhibitions and programming moved online with great success. A documentary of many of the Gallery’s artworks garnered over a million views on YouTube.
The use of online programming worried some staff at the museum, since they expected that few would want to return to the gallery when it reopened. But as it turned out, the opposite was true. Tregulova said that the museum has been visited by more young adults than before. This program, she said, will support the next generation of scientists and art lovers.
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