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.
Andrew Mellon
Encouraged by Frick, and guided by [[Charles Carstairs]]. Mellon began collecting art in the mid-to-late 1890s. Over the ensuing decades, his art collection continued to grow as he purchased pieces from [[Knoedler]] and [[Joseph Duveen, 1st Baron Duveen|Joseph Duveen]], and during the 1920s his personal collection was generally considered to be one of the finest art collections in Washington. In the early 1930s, he purchased, according to Cannadine, just under half of the "greatest paintings" from the [[Soviet Union]]'s [[Hermitage Museum]] in the [[Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings]]. [[List of original Hermitage paintings in the National Gallery of Art|Twenty-one paintings]], of the highest quality, were later given to the National Gallery of Art.