Hermitage Volunteer Service Hermitage Volunteer Service The Hermitage Volunteer Service of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia is an organisation of volunteers that unites foreign and Russian students with the goal of providing assistance to this world-renowned museum. The program aids the Hermitage with its external and internal activities and functions as an informal link between the museum staff and the public, making the knowledge of the museum’s experts accessible to the general community. Volunteers also develop projects reflecting their own personal goals and interests in connection with the museum. The mission statement of the Hermitage Volunteer Service is "Fostering a
Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings were made in the same period, notably the Codex Siniaticus from the Russian National Library, sold in 1933 to the British Museum (after 1973 British Library) for £100,000 raised by public subscription (worth £ in 2019), and "The Night Café" by Vincent van Gogh. In the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Parliament of the Russian Federation passed a new law prohibiting the sale of Russian art treasures to foreign countries. For many years the National Gallery was reluctant to lend the paintings it had bought from the Hermitage back to that Museum, for fear that the