Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings The Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings in 1930 and 1931 resulted in the departure of some of the most valuable paintings from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to Western museums. Several of the paintings had been in the Hermitage Collection since its creation by Empress Catherine the Great. About 250 paintings were sold, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, and other important artists. Andrew Mellon donated the twenty-one paintings he purchased from the Hermitage to the United States government in 1937, which became the nucleus of the
Guggenheim Hermitage Museum 2008. It attracted over 1.1 million visitors with ten exhibitions of masterworks by leading artists from the last six centuries, from Van Eyck, Titian and Velázquez, to Van Gogh, Picasso, Pollock and Lichtenstein. Guggenheim Hermitage Museum The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum was a museum owned and operated by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. It was located in The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. It was designed by architect Rem Koolhaas and opened on October 7, 2001. It added three more collections and exhibits subsequent to its opening. It was the result of a collaboration agreement between the