On 21 February 2020, the State Hermitage marked International Tourist Guide Day with a celebratory programme that, in keeping with established tradition, was prepared by the museum’s volunteers.
International Tourist Guide Day is a professional holiday for people working in the sphere of public education, and so the participants in the event that was held in the large hall of the School Centre were members of staff from the Department for Scientific and Educational Work and the School Centre (Research and Instructional Methodology Department), the Excursion Bureau, tour guides, methodologists and their heads – Liudmila Yershova of the Department for Scientific and Educational Work and Irina Diubanova, the head of the School Centre. Mikhail Kozhukhovsky, head of the Sector for Work with Volunteers, congratulated the gathering on the occasion and handed over to the tour guides more than 300 greetings cards collected by the volunteers that carried good wishes and poems, some of which were read aloud.
The interactive atmosphere of Tourist Guide Day held in the Hermitage, with best wishes from visitors as well as improvised little pieces of theatre and games, was intended to celebrate the work of tour guides and to give them a special occasion filled with special museum-style humour. This year, to mark Tourist Guide Day the Hermitage volunteers shot a video that was shown during the celebrations in the museum. The film included stories about the history of the Department for Scientific and Educational Work, works made by pupils of the School Centre’s Art Studio and amusing tales from the life and experiences of tour guides.
The beginnings of public education work in the Hermitage go back as far as the early years of the 20th century. In 1910, the prominent Classical scholar Oskar Waldhauer gave the first guided tours for schoolchildren around the displays of the art of Antiquity. The Excursion Bureau was formed in 1925. Besides guiding and lecturing work, its functions included devising plans for lessons at the Workers’ Evening University and attracting participants to the Workers Study Groups in the Hermitage. The first study group for schoolchildren began work in 1932. In the late 1930s, on the orders of the Hermitage Director, Academician Iosif Orbeli, the museum opened a School Office, whose staff planned lessons with children. In 1937–38, a seminar was organized in the Hermitage to train new staff members to conduct educational work in the museum and that seminar still plays a major role in the training of Hermitage guides. In 1941, following the outbreak of war, the Hermitage was closed, but staff members organized lectures and exhibitions for front-line soldiers. In the early post-war years general guided tours with the title “The Hermitage – a museum of world culture and art” were already particularly popular.
Today more than 30,000 guided tours for adults and 20,000 for children are given in the Hermitage each year, as well as 5,000 lectures and 400 special subject programmes. Over 40 children’s groups operate regularly. Special programmes and weekend master classes for children and their parents are held, together with a variety of other programmes.
Each year the volunteers try to surprise the tour guides with a new programme for their special day. This interaction between volunteers and guides as a rule produces some fresh ideas about how to mark upcoming occasions – the Day of Poetry and Day of Happiness, Night of Museums and various other festivals and competitions that will add to the pleasure of Hermitage visitors in2020 as well.
