On 5 December 2020, the State Hermitage marked International Volunteer Day for the 18th time. The celebration is a traditional part of the Hermitage Days. This year the event took place in an online format.
In his video address, Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, wished the volunteers all the best on their official occasion:
“The Hermitage, which is a pioneering museum in every way, forging new paths, was also one of the first when it comes to volunteerism. You existed with us and I welcomed you back when nobody was yet talking about a volunteer movement or writing about it in the papers. The Hermitage volunteers are wonderful people with a host of different ideas… Stay just as you are – full of initiative and diversity. We are proud of our volunteers and our volunteers take pride, of course, in being volunteers at the Hermitage.”
This year, the volunteers marked their special day with an online quest entitled “Munchausen in the Hermitage”. The celebration was a continuation of the main theme connected with the 300th anniversary of the birth of Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Münchhausen (1720–1797) on which the Sector for Work with Volunteers has been working together with the State Hermitage’s School Centre. The Baron’s adventures – real and fictional – were the subject of videos created earlier for the “Discover Your Europe in the Hermitage” festival, a video quest for school-age children “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in the Winter Palace”, a children’s computer art and animation competition, and more.
The festive online quest was run by Mikhail Kozhukhovsky, the head of the Sector for Work with Volunteers. He assumed the role of Baron Munchausen, while the captains of the participating teams were in the museum halls. They answered the questions in the quest and performed some creative tasks. The volunteers demonstrated their knowledge about the Baron’s real and literary lives, about his contemporaries and outstanding 18th-century figures in science and the arts.
More than 50 people took part in the quest through the social networks and over 200 spectators watched the event.
