Hermitage Museum Andrew W. Mellon acquired 21 works of art from the Hermitage and later donated to form a nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (see also Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings). With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, before the Siege of Leningrad started, two trains with a considerable part of the collections were evacuated to Sverdlovsk. Two bombs and a number of shells hit the museum buildings during the siege. The museum opened an exhibition in November 1944. In October 1945 the evacuated collections were brought back, and in November 1945 the museum
Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum as having regained support, including that of the Vilnius mayor, Arturas Zuokas, even though the embezzlement inquiry was still ongoing. As envisioned in 2008, Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum would have presented exhibitions of new media art, parts of the New York City anthology film archive, and Fluxus art. The Fluxus art movement flourished in New York during the 1960s, and was led by Lithuanian-born artist Jurgis Mačiūnas. Another important part of the exhibition would have been a collection of works by Lithuanian avant-garde film maker Jonas Mekas. These works are currently held by the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center. Collections