The result of the working visit to China paid by Elena Gagarina, Moscow Kremlin Museums Director General, became the signing of the Letter of Intent with The Palace Museum «Gugong», a national museum housed in the Forbidden City in Beijing, aiming to enlarge the bilateral cooperation, the assistance in protecting cultural heritage and its exposition, as well as the improvement of the quality of services rendered to the visitors. From the Chinese part the document was signed by Shan Jixiang, Palace Museum Director.
Moscow Kremlin Museums and the Palace Museum expressed mutual intent to strengthen cooperation in the field of exhibits’ protection and preservation, including the use of corresponding materials and technologies. Parties also agreed upon exchanging the information concerning curator’s methodology, education, study of exhibits, exhibition activity, popularization, management and marketing, services rendered to visitors, information technologies, security, cultural programmes, editorial projects. The agreement stipulates also mutual exchange of exhibitions of museum objects.
«Development and consolidation of international museum links with our partners from the East is an important part of the civilization dialogue, which is today a guarantee of permanent friendly relations between countries, - Elena Gagarina, Moscow Kremlin Museums General director underlined. Within the next years we expect to exchange with Chinese museums exhibition projects, which demonstrate upon a unique material a variety of Chinese and Russian cultural traditions. The last year our Faberge exhibition held in Shanghai and Hongkong had a great success and entered into 10 best world exhibitions. In Shanghai more than 500 thousand visitors have seen it. I am sure that such joint projects will attract attention of public, increase the interest to the history and art and will contribute to the development of the cultural tourism between our countries».
The Forbidden city of Gugong - a most vast palace complex in the world, which served as an imperial residence for rulers of the Ming and the Qing dynasties, is nowadays the main historical complex of Beijing. Founded on its base the Palace Museum conserves the greatest in China number of Chinese traditional art objects, which belonged to the imperial house.
Moscow Kremlin Museums and the Palace Museum have already the experience of successful mutual collaboration. In the year 2007 the large - scale exhibition «Forbidden city. Chinese emperors’ treasures» has been held in the One Pillar Chamber of the Patriarch’s Palace. More than 60 unique pieces from the imperial house collection of the epoch of the Ming and Qing dynasties have been exhibited. On the display an emperor’s figure was represented not only as a ruler of the great country, but also as a warrior and at the same time a philosopher and artist, an enthusiastic collector of ancient sacred objects. The exhibit gave chance to the visitors to acquaint themselves with Chinese multifaceted artistic culture, to learn many new facts of the history of the country, contacts and cooperation with which permanently grow and consolidate today.