On 27 June 2026, the exhibition Baron Stieglitz. A feat of enlightened philanthropy will begin its run in the Manege of the Small Hermitage, marking the 150th anniversary of the foundation of Baron Stieglitz’s Central School of Technical Drawing. The exhibition has been organized jointly with its direct successor, the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, and its museum.

This large‑scale project is dedicated to a unique phenomenon in Russian culture – a major institution of learning born not from state decree but private philanthropy, which soon after its creation became one of the country's leading centres of art education. Established with funding from the industrialist and patron Alexander von Stieglitz in the very heart of Saint Petersburg, the school offered an education exceptional in its depth and practical focus, while its museum could boast one of the world's finest collections of applied art, a significant portion of which is now kept in the Hermitage.

The Museum collection was intended to develop students' visual discernment and understanding of stylistic evolution through exemplary works of art. Pupils did not merely sketch and copy these masterpieces; by comprehending the craft of earlier artisans, they gradually learned to create projects of their own.

"In the mid‑19th century, artistic crafts – that is to say, 'applied art' – became mechanized and simplified. They lost their soul. The longing after that vanishing soul gave rise to a fresh surge in creativity – a movement and institutions for the development of aesthetically conscious crafts, the forerunners of present-day design," Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, notes. "Today we very much need the spirit and emotional tenor of the era in which the School was founded. This magnificent exhibition is a serious and beautiful contribution to the revival of a historical perspective in the arts and the cultivation of good taste."

For the first time in 100 years, items from the Hermitage collections and the Museum of the Stieglitz Academy will be reunited in a single exhibition. As encyclopaedic as the Hermitage itself, the school's collection will demonstrate every facet of true craftsmanship. On display will be around 800 outstanding works of art from different countries and periods, ranging from Classical Antiquity to the Art Nouveau. Visitors will see Schliemann's finds from Hisarlik, 16th‑century tapestries, marble reliefs from the Palazzo d'Este in Ferrara, mediaeval manuscripts, masterpieces of Renaissance and Eastern applied art, rare books, and works of ornamental engraving and drawing. Many of the exhibits are being published here for the first time. A considerable number of objects have been restored specially for the exhibition in the Hermitage's restoration laboratories.

Moreover, the exhibition’s design will allow visitors to immerse themselves in a historical atmosphere. The display is built on the contrast between the museum and the classroom – display cases containing masterpieces stand alongside drawings by students of the past and architectural projects. In this distinctive "museum within a museum" space, the refined interiors from the era of Historicism have been recreated – their revival of past styles once turned the School's museum into a living textbook of art history. Visitors will find themselves simultaneously in a museum, as in a temple of knowledge, and in a operational workshop – a place where the collection once again fulfils its original function: to inculcate refined taste and craftsmanship.

The Hermitage Youth Advisory Board has prepared a special project for the exhibition: "On Design in Quotations". The display will be supplemented by quotations from notable figures, revealing how attitudes towards the design of objects and towards things people use every day without thinking about the labour invested in their creation have changed over time.

The theme of how objects have existed in different eras will be continued in a joint project between the State Hermitage and the Department of Animation and Media Design at the Stieglitz Academy: "Objects Come to Life", for which students have created a series of animated films about the exhibits.

A four‑volume illustrated catalogue, containing scholarly articles by staff of the State Hermitage and the Museum of the Stieglitz Academy, is being prepared for the exhibition. The first volume will be published by the time the exhibition opens.