Hermitage Museum private mansions were nationalized and redistributed among major Soviet state museums. Particularly notable was the influx of old masters from the Catherine Palace, the Alexander Palace, the Stroganov Palace and the Yusupov Palace as well as from other palaces of Saint Petersburg and suburbs. In 1922, an important collection of 19th-century European paintings was transferred to the Hermitage from the Academy of Arts. In turn, in 1927 about 500 important paintings were transferred to the Central Museum of old Western art in Moscow at the insistence of the Soviet authorities. In the early 1930s, 70 more paintings were sent there.
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