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
Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum Kirkilas and former Vilnius Mayor Juozas Imbrasas also participated in the decision-making process. The Vilnius Guggenheim Initiative was ended after allegations of corruption involving the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center, discovered after an audit by the National Audit Office of Lithuania. Finland then received the opportunity to develop the museum in Helsinki with no further chances to develop the museum in Vilnius. Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum was a proposed art museum in the city of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. On April 8, 2008 an international jury named Zaha Hadid, a British-Iraqi architect, the winner of