Hermitage Museum
Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items (the numismatic collection accounts for about one-third of them), including the largest collection of paintings in the world. The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya, and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since July 1992, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky.
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Musical Instruments gallery closed 25 February 2010, a decision which was highly controversial. An online petition of over 5,100 names on the Parliamentary website led to Chris Smith asking Parliament about the future of the collection. The answer, from Bryan Davies was that the museum intended to preserve and care for the collection and keep it available to the public, with items being redistributed to the British Galleries, the Medieval & Renaissance Galleries, and the planned new galleries for Furniture and Europe 1600–1800, and that the Horniman Museum and other institutions were possible candidates for loans of material to ensure that the instruments remained publicly viewable. The Horniman went on to host a joint exhibition with the V&A of musical instruments, and has the loan of 35 instruments from the museum.
The collection includes about 1130 British and 650 European oil paintings, 6800 British watercolours, pastels and 2000 miniatures, for which the museum holds the national collection. Also on loan to the museum, from Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II, are the Raphael Cartoons: the seven surviving (there were ten) full scale designs for tapestries in the Sistine Chapel, of the lives of Peter and Paul from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. There is also on display a fresco by Pietro Perugino dated 1522 from the church of Castello at Fontignano (Perugia) and is amongst the painter's last works. One of the largest objects in the collection is the Spanish tempera on wood, 670 x 486 cm, retable of St George, c. 1400, consisting of numerous scenes and painted by Andrés Marzal De Sax in Valencia.