Russian Museum of Ethnography Russian Museum of Ethnography The Russian Museum of Ethnography (Российский этнографический музей) is a museum in St. Petersburg that houses a collection of about 500,000 items relating to the ethnography, or cultural anthropology, of peoples of the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. The museum was set up in 1902 as the ethnographic department of the Russian Museum. It is housed in a purpose-built Neoclassical building erected between 1902 and 1913 to Vasily Svinyin's design in the proximity of the Old Michael Palace (which accommodates the art collection of the Russian Museum). It occupies the place of the eastern
Hermitage Museum created the Pavilion Hall in the Northern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage in 1851–1858. Until the 1920s, the museum's entrance was under the portico supported by five-metre high atlantes of grey Serdobol granite from Finland in the middle of the southern facade of the New Hermitage building. In 1861, the Hermitage purchased from the Papal government part of the Giampietro Campana collection, which consisted mostly classical antiquities. These included over 500 vases, 200 bronzes and a number of marble statues. The Hermitage acquired "Madonna Litta", which was then attributed to Leonardo, in 1865, and Raphael's "Connestabile Madonna" in 1870. In