Russia’s Culture Ministry took to Instagram to announce that it has extended the contract of Mikhail Piotrovsky, the general director of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, for another four years. The post, hashtagged Hermitage (#эрмитаж), expressed congratulations to the museum and wishes for “many major exhibitions and new projects”. By 2020, Piotrovsky, who is 71, will have presided over one of the world’s greatest museums for 24 years—even longer than this his father, Boris Piotrovsky, who ran the Hermitage from 1964 to 1990. Mikhail Borisovich, as the younger Piotrovsky is usually called, took the helm in 1992.
