The State Hermitage Youth Education Center or from those in the Leningrad region. Which thematic section they decide to join depends exclusively on their particular inclinations and interests. All activities at the Youth Center begin on October 1 – the day on which Russia celebrates “student day” in the Hermitage Theatre. The "Present Art" program includes masterclasses and exhibitions of renowned artists, meetings with curators of international art projects, lectures about current issues in contemporary art, discussions and seminars. These programs invite the participation of representatives from specific departments of Russian universities (St. Petersburg State University, Herzen University, I. Repin St.Petersburg State Academy Institute of painting,
Hermitage Museum adorned with twenty grey Serdobol granite columns and feature 19th-century European sculpture and Russian lapidary works. The rooms and galleries along the southern facade and in the western wing of the New Hermitage are now entirely devoted to Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting of the 17th century, including the large collections of Van Dyck, Rubens and Rembrandt. They also contain several paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder (Velvet period), Frans Snyders (for example, "The Fish Market"), Gerard ter Borch, Paulus Potter, Jan van Goyen, Ferdinand Bol and Gerard van Honthorst. The first floor rooms on the southern facade