Saving Russian Photographs for Future Generations

Six ornate photo album covers on left, middle image shows conservators reviewing old photo album contents at Menshikov Palace, right image is an old yellowed photograph of a military officer

An initiative to train photograph conservators and preserve the photograph collections at the State Hermitage Museum


The Hermitage Photograph Conservation Initiative helps establish a department of photograph conservation at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.  Through a grant by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation (FAIC, formerly the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works), the initiative provides training, reference materials, cataloging, digital documentation, and equipment.

The four-year project began in March of 2010, and combines the efforts of multiple organizations, disciplines, and languages to train Hermitage conservators, curators, technicians, and museum personnel, with the ultimate goal of preserving the Hermitage’s outstanding collections that number in excess of 470,000 photographs.

This web portal is designed to provide background on the initiative as well as to share the training materials and resources with a wider international conservation community.