Escher in the Palace one's eyes will be tricked by multiple interactive displays. In the rooms of the museum are fifteen chandeliers made by the Rotterdam artist, Hans van Bentem. The artist designed these especially for the museum, with some references to the work of Escher and the Palace. In the ballroom, a star chandelier is endlessly reflected in the two mirrors. In other rooms there are chandeliers such as a shark, a skull, spiders, and a sea horse. The parquet floor in the Palace was designed in 1991/92 by the American minimal artist Donald Judd on the occasion of the opening of the
Private Apartments of the Winter Palace the Tsaritsa's opinion: "Saint Petersburg is a rotten town, and not one atom Russian." Under her influence, gradually the great court receptions and balls at the Winter Palace, which humoured and cultivated the powerful nobility, came to an end, to be briefly replaced by theatricals held in the Hermitage which "no one enjoyed." Then even the theatricals ceased. The Silver and Empire Drawing Rooms were part of the suite of rooms reserved for the private use of the Tsaritsa. They form an enfilade which culminates in the Malachite Drawing Room, which served as the Tsaritsa's State Drawing Room, where she