The State Hermitage Museum () is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. The Art Newspaper ranked the museum 10th  in their list of the most visited art museums, with 2,812,913 visitors in 2022.

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). 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.

Of the six buildings in the main museum complex, five—namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, and Hermitage Theatre—are all open to the public. The entrance ticket for foreign tourists costs more than the fee paid by citizens of Russia and Belarus. However, entrance is free of charge the third Thursday of every month for all visitors, and free daily for students and children. The museum is closed on Mondays. The entrance for individual visitors is located in the Winter Palace, accessible from the Courtyard.

Etymology
A hermitage is the dwelling of a hermit or recluse. The word derives from Old French hermit, ermit "hermit, recluse", from Late Latin eremita, from Greek eremites, that means "people who live alone", which is in turn derived from ἐρημός (erēmos), "desert".

Buildings
Originally, the only building housing the collection was the "Small Hermitage". Today, the Hermitage Museum encompasses many buildings on the Palace Embankment and its neighbourhoods. Apart from the Small Hermitage, the museum now also includes the "Old Hermitage" (also called "Large Hermitage"), the "New Hermitage", the "Hermitage Theatre", and the "Winter Palace", the former main residence of the Russian tsars. In recent years, the Hermitage has expanded to the General Staff Building on the Palace Square facing the Winter Palace, and the Menshikov Palace.

Collections

The Western European Art collection includes European paintings, sculpture, and applied art from the 13th to the 20th centuries.

Egyptian antiquities

Since 1940, the Egyptian collection, dating back to 1852 and including the former Castiglione Collection, has occupied a large hall on the ground floor in the eastern part of the Winter Palace.

Classical antiquities
The collection of classical antiquities occupies most of the ground floor of the Old and New Hermitage buildings. The interiors of the ground floor were designed by German architect Leo von Klenze in the Greek revival style in the early 1850s, using painted polished stucco and columns of natural marble and granite.

The Room of the Great Vase in the western wing features the  high Kolyvan Vase, weighing , made of jasper in 1843 and installed before the walls were erected. While the western wing was designed for exhibitions, the rooms on the ground floor in the eastern wing of the New Hermitage, now also hosting exhibitions, were originally intended for libraries.

The collection of classical antiquities features Greek artifacts from the third millennium – fifth century BC, ancient Greek pottery, items from the Greek cities of the North Pontic Greek colonies, Hellenistic sculpture and jewellery, including engraved gems and cameos, such as the famous Gonzaga Cameo, Italic art from the 9th to second century BC, Roman marble and bronze sculpture and applied art from the first century BC - fourth century AD, including copies of Classical and Hellenistic Greek sculptures. One of the highlights of the collection is the Tauride Venus, which, according to latest research, is an original Hellenistic Greek sculpture rather than a Roman copy as it was thought before. There are, however, only a few pieces of authentic Classical Greek sculpture and sepulchral monuments.

Prehistoric art
On the ground floor in the western wing of the Winter Palace the collections of prehistoric artifacts and the culture and art of the Caucasus are located, as well as the second treasure gallery. The prehistoric artifacts date from the Paleolithic to the Iron Age and were excavated all over Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire. Among them is a renowned collection of the art and culture of nomadic tribes of the Altai from Pazyryk and Bashadar sites, including the world's oldest surviving knotted-pile carpet and a well-preserved wooden chariot, both from the 4th–3rd centuries BC. The Caucasian exhibition includes a collection of Urartu artifacts from Armenia and Western Armenia. Many of them were excavated at Teishebaini under the supervision of Boris Piotrovsky, former director of the Hermitage Museum.

Jewelry and decorative art
Four small rooms on the ground floor, enclosed in the middle of the New Hermitage between the room displaying Classical Antiquities, comprise the first treasure gallery, featuring western jewellery from the 4th millennium BC to the early 20th century AD. The second treasure gallery, located on the ground floor in the southwest corner of the Winter Palace, features jewellery from the Pontic steppes, Caucasus and Asia, in particular Scythian and Sarmatian gold.

Pavilion Hall, designed by Andrei Stackenschneider in 1858, occupies the first floor of the Northern Pavilion in the Small Hermitage. It features the 18th-century golden Peacock Clock by James Cox and a collection of mosaics. Two galleries spanning the west side of the Small Hermitage from the Northern to Southern Pavilion house an exhibition of Western European decorative and applied art from the 12th to 15th century and the fine art of the Low Countries from the 15th and 16th centuries.

Italian Renaissance
The rooms on the first floor of the Old Hermitage were designed by Andrei Stakenschneider in revival styles in between 1851 and 1860, although the design survives only in some of them. They feature works of Italian Renaissance artists, including Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, as well as Benois Madonna and Madonna Litta attributed to Leonardo da Vinci or his school.

The Italian Renaissance galleries continues in the eastern wing of the New Hermitage with paintings, sculpture, majolica and tapestry from Italy of the 15th–16th centuries, including Conestabile Madonna and Madonna with Beardless St. Joseph by Raphael.

Italian and Spanish fine art
The first floor of New Hermitage contains three large interior spaces in the center of the museum complex with red walls and lit from above by skylights. These are adorned with 19th-century Russian lapidary works and feature Italian and Spanish canvases of the 16th–18th centuries, including Veronese, Giambattista Pittoni, Tintoretto, Velázquez and Murillo.

Knights' Hall
The Knights' Hall, a large room in the eastern part of the New Hermitage originally designed in the Greek revival style for the display of coins, now hosts a collection of Western European arms and armour from the 15th–17th centuries, part of the Hermitage Arsenal collection.

The Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting adjoins the Knights' Hall and also flanks the skylight rooms. It was designed by Leo von Klenze in the Greek revival style as a prelude to the museum and features neoclassical marble sculptures by Antonio Canova and his followers. In the middle, the gallery opens to the main staircase of the New Hermitage, which served as the entrance to the museum before the October Revolution of 1917, but is now closed.

Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque

The rooms and galleries along the southern facade and in the western wing of the New Hermitage are now entirely devoted to Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting of the 17th century, including the large collections of Van Dyck, Rubens and Rembrandt.

German, Swiss, British and French fine art
The first floor rooms on the southern facade of the Winter Palace are occupied by the collections of German fine art of the 16th century and French fine art of the 15th–18th centuries, including paintings by Poussin, Lorrain, Watteau. The collections of French decorative and applied art from the 17th–18th centuries and British applied and fine art from the 16th–19th century, including Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, are on display in nearby rooms facing the courtyard.

Russian art
The richly decorated interiors of the first floor of the Winter Palace on its eastern, northern and western sides are part of the Russian culture collection and host the exhibitions of Russian art from the 11th-19th centuries.

French Neoclassical, Impressionist, and post-Impressionist art

French Neoclassical, Impressionist and post-Impressionist art, including works by Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh and Gauguin, are displayed  on the fourth floor of the Eastern Wing of the General Staff Building. Also displayed are paintings by Camille Pissarro (Boulevard Montmartre, Paris), Paul Cézanne (Mount Sainte-Victoire), Alfred Sisley, Henri Morel, and Degas.

Modern, German Romantic and other 19th–20th century art

Modern art is displayed in the General Staff Building (Saint Petersburg). It features Matisse, Derain and other fauvists, Picasso, Malevich, Petrocelli, Kandinsky, Giacomo Manzù, Giorgio Morandi  and Rockwell Kent. A large room is devoted to the German Romantic art of the 19th century, including several paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. The second floor of the Western wing features collections of the Oriental art (from China, India, Mongolia, Tibet, Central Asia, Byzantium and Near East).

History

Origins: Catherine's collection
Catherine the Great started her art collection in 1764 by purchasing paintings from Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. He assembled the collection for Frederick II of Prussia, who ultimately refused to purchase it. Thus, Gotzkowsky provided 225 or 317 paintings (conflicting accounts list both numbers), mainly Flemish and Dutch, as well as others, including 90 not precisely identified, to the Russian crown. The collection consisted of Rembrandt (13 paintings), Rubens (11 paintings), Jacob Jordaens (7 paintings), Anthony van Dyck (5 paintings), Paolo Veronese (5 paintings), Frans Hals (3 paintings, including Portrait of a Young Man with a Glove), Raphael (2 paintings), Holbein (2 paintings), Titian (1 painting), Jan Steen (The Idlers), Hendrik Goltzius, Dirck van Baburen, Hendrick van Balen and Gerrit van Honthorst. Perhaps some of the most famous and notable artworks that were a part of Catherine's original purchase from Gotzkowsky were Danaë, painted by Rembrandt in 1636; Descent from the Cross, painted by Rembrandt in 1624; and Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Glove, painted by Frans Hals in 1650. These paintings remain in the Hermitage collection today.

In 1764, Catherine commissioned Yury Felten to build an extension on the east of the Winter Palace which he completed in 1766.  Later it became the Southern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage. From 1767 to 1769, French architect Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe built the Northern Pavilion on the Neva embankment. Between 1767 and 1775, the extensions were connected by galleries, where Catherine put her collections. The entire neoclassical building is now known as the Small Hermitage. During the time of Catherine, the Hermitage was not a public museum and few people were allowed to view its holdings. Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe also rebuilt rooms in the second story of the south-east corner block that was originally built for Elizabeth and later occupied by Peter III. The largest room in this particular apartment was the Audience Chamber (also called the Throne Hall) which consisted of 227 square meters.

The Hermitage buildings served as a home and workplace for nearly a thousand people, including the Imperial family. In addition to this, they also served as an extravagant showplace for all kinds of Russian relics and displays of wealth prior to the art collections. Many events were held in these buildings including masquerades for the nobility, grand receptions and ceremonies for state and government officials. The "Hermitage complex" was a creation of Catherine's that allowed all kinds of festivities to take place in the palace, the theatre and even the museum of the Hermitage. This helped solidify the Hermitage as not only a dwelling place for the Imperial family, but also as an important symbol and memorial to the imperial Russian state. Today, the palace and the museum are one and the same. In Catherine's day, the Winter Palace served as a central part of what was called the Palace Square. The Palace Square served as St. Petersburg's nerve center by linking it to all the city's most important buildings. The presence of the Palace Square was extremely significant to the urban development of St. Petersburg, and while it became less of a nerve center later into the 20th century, its symbolic value was still very much preserved.

Catherine acquired the best collections offered for sale by the heirs of prominent collectors. In 1769, she purchased Brühl's collection, consisting of over 600 paintings and a vast number of prints and drawings, in Saxony. Three years later, she bought Crozat's collection of paintings in France with the assistance of Denis Diderot. Next, in 1779, she acquired the collection of 198 paintings that once belonged to Robert Walpole in London followed by a collection of 119 paintings in Paris from Count Baudouin in 1781. Catherine's favorite items to collect were believed to be engraved gems and cameos. At the inaugural exhibit of the Hermitage, opened by Charles, Prince of Wales in November 2000, there was an entire gallery devoted to representing and displaying Catherine's favorite items. In this gallery her cameos are displayed along with cabinet made by David Roentgen, which holds her engraved gems. As the symbol of Minerva was frequently used and favored by Catherine to represent her patronage of the arts, a cameo of Catherine as Minerva is also displayed here. This particular cameo was created for her by her daughter-in-law, the Grand Duchess Maria Fyodorovna. This is only a small representation of Catherine's vast collection of many antique and contemporary engraved gems and cameos.

The collection soon overgrew the building. In her lifetime, Catherine acquired 4,000 paintings from the old masters, 38,000 books, 10,000 engraved gems, 10,000 drawings, 16,000 coins and medals, and a natural history collection filling two galleries, so in 1771 she commissioned Yury Felten to build another major extension. The neoclassical building was completed in 1787 and has come to be known as the Large Hermitage or Old Hermitage. Catherine also gave the name of the Hermitage to her private theatre, built nearby between 1783 and 1787 by the Italian architect Giacomo Quarenghi. In London in 1787, Catherine acquired the collection of sculpture that belonged to Lyde Browne, mostly Ancient Roman marbles. Catherine used them to adorn the Catherine Palace and park in Tsarskoye Selo, but later they became the core of the Classical Antiquities collection of the Hermitage. From 1787 to 1792, Quarenghi designed and built a wing along the Winter Canal with the Raphael Loggias to replicate the loggia in the Apostolic Palace in Rome designed by Donato Bramante and frescoed by Raphael.

Catherine's collection of at least 4,000 paintings came to rival the older and more prestigious museums of Western Europe. Catherine took great pride in her collection and actively participated in extensive competitive art gathering and collecting that was prevalent in European royal court culture. Through her art collection she gained European acknowledgment and acceptance and portrayed Russia as an enlightened society. Catherine went on to invest much of her identity in being a patron of the arts. She was particularly fond of the Roman deity Minerva, whose characteristics according to classical tradition are military prowess, wisdom, and patronage of the arts. Using the title Catherine the Minerva, she created new institutions of literature and culture and also participated in many projects of her own, mostly play writing. The representation of Catherine alongside Minerva would come to be a tradition of enlightened patronage in Russia.

Expansion in the 19th century

In 1815, Alexander I of Russia purchased 38 pictures from the heirs of Joséphine de Beauharnais, most of which had been looted by the French in Kassel during the war. The Hermitage collection of Rembrandts was then considered the largest in the world. Also among Alexander's purchases from Josephine's estate were the first four sculptures by the neoclassical Italian sculptor Antonio Canova to enter the Hermitage collection.

Between 1840 and 1843, Vasily Stasov redesigned the interiors of the Southern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage. In 1838, Nicholas I commissioned the neoclassical German architect Leo von Klenze to design a building for the public museum. Space for the museum was made next to the Small Hermitage by the demolition of the Shepelev Palace and royal stables. The construction was overseen by the Russian architects Vasily Stasov and Nikolai Yefimov from 1842 to 1851 and incorporated Quarenghi's wing with the Raphael Loggias.

The New Hermitage was opened to the public on 5 February 1852. In the same year the Egyptian Collection of the Hermitage Museum emerged and was particularly enriched by items given by the Duke of Leuchtenberg, Nicholas I's son-in-law. Meanwhile, from 1851 to 1860, the interiors of the Old Hermitage were redesigned by Andrei Stackensneider to accommodate the State Assembly, Cabinet of Ministers and state apartments. Stakenschneider created the Pavilion Hall in the Northern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage from 1851 to 1858.

In 1861, the Hermitage purchased from the Papal government part of the Giampietro Campana collection, which consisted mostly classical antiquities. These included over 500 vases, 200 bronzes and a number of marble statues. The Hermitage acquired Madonna Litta, which was then attributed to Leonardo, in 1865, and Raphael's Connestabile Madonna in 1870. In 1884 in Paris, Alexander III of Russia acquired the collection of Alexander Basilewski, featuring European medieval and Renaissance artifacts. In 1885, the Arsenal collection of arms and armour, founded by Alexander I of Russia, was transferred from the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo to the Hermitage. In 1914, Leonardo's Benois Madonna was added to the collection.

After the October Revolution
Immediately after the Revolution of 1917, the Imperial Hermitage and the Winter Palace, the former Imperial residence, were proclaimed state museums and eventually merged.

The range of the Hermitage's exhibits was further expanded when private art collections from several palaces of the Russian Tsars and numerous private mansions were nationalized and redistributed among major Soviet state museums. Particularly notable was the influx of old masters from the Catherine Palace, the Alexander Palace, the Stroganov Palace, and the Yusupov Palace, as well as from other palaces of Saint Petersburg and suburbs.

In 1922, a collection of 19th-century European paintings was transferred to the Hermitage from the Academy of Arts. In turn, in 1927 about 500 important paintings were transferred to the Central Museum of old Western art in Moscow at the insistence of the Soviet authorities.

In 1928, the Soviet government ordered the Hermitage to compile a list of valuable works of art for export. From 1930 to 1934, over two thousand works of art from the Hermitage collection were clandestinely sold at auctions abroad or directly to foreign officials and businesspeople. The sold items included Raphael's Alba Madonna, Titian's Venus with a Mirror, and Jan van Eyck's Annunciation, among other world known masterpieces by Botticelli, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and others. In 1931 Andrew W. Mellon acquired 21 works of art from the Hermitage and later donated them 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 reopened.

In 1948, 316 works of Impressionist, post-Impressionist, and modern art from the collection of the Museum of New Western Art in Moscow, originating mostly from the nationalized collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov before the war, were transferred to the Hermitage, including works by Matisse and Picasso.

On 15 June 1985, a man later judged insane attacked Rembrandt's painting Danaë, displayed in the museum. He threw sulfuric acid on the canvas and cut it twice with a knife. The restoration of the painting had been accomplished by Hermitage conservationists by 1997, and Danaë is now on display behind armoured glass.

The Hermitage since 1991
In 1991, it became known that some paintings looted by the Red Army in Germany in 1945 were held in the Hermitage. But only in October 1994 did the Hermitage officially announce that it had secretly been holding a major trove of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings from German private collections. The exhibition "Hidden Treasures Revealed", where 74 of the paintings were displayed for the first time, was opened on 30 March 1995 in the Nicholas Hall of the Winter Palace and lasted a year. Of the paintings, all but one originated from private rather than state German collections, including 56 paintings from the Otto Krebs collection, as well as the collection of Bernhard Koehler and paintings previously belonging to Otto Gerstenberg and his daughter Margarete Scharf, including the world-famous Place de la Concorde by Degas, In the Garden by Renoir, and White House at Night by Van Gogh. Some of the paintings are now on permanent display in several small rooms in the northeastern corner of the Winter Palace on the first floor.

In 1993, the Russian government gave the eastern wing of the nearby General Staff Building across the Palace Square to the Hermitage and the new exhibition rooms in 1999. Since 2003, the Great Courtyard of the Winter Palace has been open to the public.

In 2003, the Hermitage loaned 142 pieces to the University of Michigan Museum of Art for an exhibition titled The Romanovs Collect: European Art from the Hermitage.

In December 2004, the museum discovered another looted work of art: Venus Disarming Mars by Rubens was once in the collection of the Rheinsberg Palace near Berlin, and was apparently looted by Soviet troops from the Königsberg Castle in East Prussia in 1945. At the time, Mikhail Piotrovsky said the painting would be cleaned and displayed.

The museum announced in July 2006 that 221 minor items, including jewelry, Orthodox icons, silverware and richly enameled objects, had been stolen. The value of the stolen items was estimated to be approximately $543,000. By the end of 2006 several of the stolen items had been recovered.

In March 2020, Apple released a continuous 5 hour and 19 minute one shot film recorded entirely on an iPhone 11 Pro detailing many rooms of the museum which highlighted not only the artwork, but also the architecture, and live movement pieces interspersed throughout.

Dependencies

In recent years, the Hermitage launched several dependencies abroad and domestically.

Hermitage-Kazan Exhibition Center
The Hermitage dependency in Kazan (Tatarstan, Russia), opened in 2005. It was created with support from President of the Republic of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev and is a subdivision of the Kazan Kremlin State Historical and Architectural Museum-Park. The museum is situated in the Kazan Kremlin in an edifice previously occupied by the Junker School built in the beginning of the 19th century.

Ermitage Italia, Ferrara
Following the prior experiences in London, Las Vegas, Amsterdam and Kazan, the Hermitage foundation decided to create a further branch in Italy with the launch of a national bid. Several northern Italian cities expressed interest such as Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and Turin. In 2007, the honor was awarded to the city of Ferrara which proposed its Castle Estense as the base. Since then, the new institution called Ermitage Italia started a research and scientific collaboration with the Hermitage foundation.

Hermitage-Vyborg Center

Hermitage-Vyborg Center was opened in June 2010 in Vyborg, Leningrad Oblast.

Hermitage Exhibition Center, Vladivostok
A Hermitage branch is due to open in Vladivostok by 2016, and the regional government has allocated more than Rb17.7 million ($558,000) for preliminary reconstruction work on a mansion in Vladivostok's historic downtown district to house the satellite.

Hermitage-Siberia, Omsk
The Hermitage-Siberia is due to open in Omsk in 2016.

Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, Vilnius
In recent years, there have been proposals to open a Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in the capital city of Lithuania. Like the former Las Vegas dependency, the museum is to combine artworks from the Saint Petersburg Hermitage with works from the New York Guggenheim Museum.

Former dependencies
The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas opened on 7 October 2001 and closed on 11 May 2008. The Hermitage Rooms in London's Somerset House opened on 25 November 2000. The exhibition was closed permanently in November 2007 due to poor visitor numbers.

The dependency of the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam was known as the Hermitage Amsterdam, and is located in the former Amstelhof building. It opened on 24 February 2004 in a small building on the Nieuwe Herengracht in Amsterdam, awaiting the closing of the retirement home which still occupied the Amstelhof building until 2007. Between 2007 and 2009, the Amstelhof was renovated and made suitable for the housing of the Amsterdam Hermitage. The Amsterdam Hermitage was opened on 19 June 2009 by President Dmitry Medvedev and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. Following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Amsterdam Hermitage severed ties with St. Petersburg, being renamed to H'Art Museum the following year.

Management

Hermitage directors

 Florian Gilles
 Stepan Gedeonov (1863–78)
 Alexander Vasilchikov (1879–88)
 Sergei Nikitich Trubetskoi (1888–99)
 Ivan Vsevolozhsky (1899–1909)
 Dmitry Tolstoi (1909–1918)
 Boris Legran (1931–1934)
 Iosif Orbeli (1934–1951)
 Mikhail Artamonov (1951–1964)
 Boris Piotrovsky (1964–1990)
 Mikhail Piotrovsky (1992–present)

Volunteer service

The Hermitage Volunteer Service offers all those interested a unique opportunity to involve themselves in running this world-renowned museum. The program not only aids the Hermitage with its external and internal activities but also serves as an informal link between the museum staff and the public, bringing the specific knowledge of the museum's experts to the community. Volunteers may also develop projects reflecting their own personal goals and interests: communicate a feeling of responsibility to the youth so as to help them understand the value of tradition and the necessity of its preservation.

Cats

A population of cats lives on the museum grounds and serves as an attraction.

In popular culture

Films
Russian Ark (2002), the Russian film by Alexander Sokurov, was filmed entirely in the Hermitage Museum, showing the Winter Palace at various stages of its history.
War and Peace (1966–67), an Oscar-winning Soviet adaptation of the 1869 novel by Leo Tolstoy, was partially filmed in the Winter Palace.

Television
Russia-K, a Russian national television channel, has been presenting the various art collections of the Hermitage to the general public for years. There are a series of programs that have aired entitled My Hermitage that have been particularly successful. All of these programs are organized by the Director of the Hermitage, Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky, and are quite similar to the broadcasts created by Academician Boris Piotrovsky, who is Mikhail's father. These programs were first broadcast through the Soviet Union's 'First' channel, airing at the height of the museum's boom. During this time, this channel recorded more than three million visitors every year, mostly from the Soviet Union. Another program created by the Hermitage was called The Treasures of St. Petersburg, and was broadcast on the St. Petersburg regional television. This program gave insight into what exhibitions were being displayed at the Hermitage.

Treasures of St Petersburg & The Hermitage, (2003) a three-part documentary series for Channel 5 in the UK, directed by Graham Addicott and produced by Pille Runk.

Hermitage Revealed (2014) is a BBC documentary from Margy Kinmonth. The film tells the story of its journey from imperial palace to state museum, investigating remarkable tales of dedication, devotion, ownership and ultimate sacrifice, showing how the collection came about, how it survived tumultuous revolutionary times and what makes the Hermitage unique today.

Literature
 To the Hermitage, a 2000 novel by Malcolm Bradbury, retells the story of Diderot's journey to Russia to meet Catherine the Great in her Hermitage.
 Petersburg, a 1913 novel by Andrey Bely, features the Winter Canal near the palace as one of its central locations, but never names the Winter Palace directly.
 Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell, features as one of its protagonists a woman who works for an art counterfeiting ring whilst masquerading as a docent in a gallery room on the upper floor of the Large Hermitage.
 The Madonnas of Leningrad, a novel by Debra Dean, features the Hermitage during World War II.
 Sancar Seckiner's 2017 book Thilda's House (Thilda'nın Evi) includes a chapter highlighting the writer's experience at the Hermitage Museum by indicating several masterworks of the 15th–19th centuries.

Games
The Hermitage appears in the video games Civilization IV, Civilization V and Civilization VI as a wonder of the world.
The Hermitage appears in the first mission of the Soviet campaign in the video game Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3; it is under attack from forces of the Empire of the Rising Sun.

Gallery

See also
List of most visited art museums
List of museums in Saint Petersburg
Baldin Collection

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

External links

 Hermitage Museum Unofficial Guide
 Hermitage Amsterdam

Virtual tour of the Hermitage Museum provided by Google Arts & Culture

1764 establishments in the Russian Empire
Art museums and galleries in Saint Petersburg
Art museums established in 1764
Egyptological collections in Russia
Landmarks in Russia
Museums in Saint Petersburg
Museums of ancient Greece in Russia
Museums of Ancient Near East in Russia
Museums of ancient Rome in Russia
National art museums and galleries in Saint Petersburg

Hermitage Museum


José Carlos Mayrink da Silva Ferrão (December 5, 1771 – January 15, 1846) was a Brazilian politician and landowner. Son of Captain Baltazar João Mayrink and Maria Dorotéia Joaquina de Seixas, was also brother of Maria Dorotéia Joaquina de Seixas Brandão, also known as "Marilia de Dirceu". He adopted the name of Silva Ferrão family.

Biography
In Rio de Janeiro, where he was studying, he met Caetano Pinto de Miranda Montenegro, appointed Governor of Mato Grosso, for whom he became secretary. When Montenegro was transferred to Pernambuco, in 1804, José Carlos accompanied him, and became secretary of the new governor.
He remained in that position until the deposition of the governor in 1817. Wrapped in Pernambuco Revolution of 1817, he had to flee and went into exile in Paris. Returning to Recife,  sometime after, with the Empire, he was appointed the First President of the Province of Pernambuco (appointed on April 25, 1824, took over on May 23, 1824), until April 14, 1826, when he traveled to the imperial court (the city of Rio de Janeiro) to take lifetime job then senator of the Empire of Brazil, from 1826 to 1846. He reassumed the position of president of the province, returning to manage it in 1827 (appointed on January 20, 1827, took over on October 25, 1827) until December 29, 1828. He transferred the capital of Pernambuco, Olinda to Recife. Again, he was third President of Pernambuco (from October 30, 1827 to December 24, 1828).

In addition to being a Senator of the Brazilian Empire, it was also Colonel of Militia of Cavalry of Cape and, National Guard Colonel. It also was Knight of the Imperial Order of Christ.

He has left progeny, through which flows the name Seixas Ferrão, from his marriage to Maria Joana Maria de Deus Gomes (1776, Recife, PE – August 10, 1866, Recife, PE), daughter of João Antônio Gomes, head of family Gomes from Pernambuco and, maternal granddaughter of Domingos Pereira Pires, patriarch of family Pires Pereira from Pernambuco.

References

1771 births
1846 deaths
Brazilian politicians
People from Ouro Preto

José Carlos da Silva Mayrink Ferrão


The District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would have given the District of Columbia full representation in the United States Congress, full representation in the Electoral college system, and full participation in how the Constitution is amended. It was proposed by Congress on August 22, 1978. It was ratified by only 16 states by the time it expired on August 22, 1985. It was 22 ratifications short of the needed 38 in order for the proposed amendment to have been adopted.

Text

Legislative history
Representative Don Edwards of California proposed House Joint Resolution 554 in the 95th Congress. The United States House of Representatives passed it on March 2, 1978, by a 289–127 vote, with 18 not voting. The United States Senate passed it on August 22, 1978, by a 67–32 vote, with 1 not voting. With that, the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment was submitted to the state legislatures for ratification. The Congress included in the text of the proposed amendment that included the requirement that ratification by three-fourths (38) of the states be completed within seven years following its passage by the Congress (i.e., August 22, 1985) in order for the proposed amendment to become part of the Constitution. By placing the ratification deadline in the text of the proposed amendment, the deadline could not be extended, as had been done regarding the Equal Rights Amendment.

Ratification history
Ratification by the legislatures of at least 38 of the 50 states by August 22, 1985 was necessary for the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment to become a part of the Constitution. During the seven-year period specified by Congress it was ratified by only 16 states and so failed to be adopted. The amendment was ratified by the following states:

New Jersey on September 11, 1978
Michigan on December 13, 1978
Ohio on December 21, 1978
Minnesota on March 19, 1979
Massachusetts on March 19, 1979
Connecticut on April 11, 1979
Wisconsin on November 1, 1979
Maryland on March 19, 1980
Hawaii on April 17, 1980
Oregon on July 6, 1981
Maine on February 16, 1983
West Virginia on February 23, 1983
Rhode Island on May 13, 1983
Iowa on January 19, 1984
Louisiana on June 24, 1984
Delaware on June 28, 1984

Effects if it had been adopted
Had it been adopted, this proposed amendment would have given Washington, D.C. full representation in both houses of the Congress. Also, this proposed amendment would have repealed the Twenty-third Amendment. The Twenty-third Amendment does not allow Washington, D.C. to have more electoral votes "than the least populous State," nor does it grant Washington, D.C. any role in the election of a President by the House of Representatives (or that of the Vice President by the Senate). In contrast, this proposed amendment would have provided Washington, D.C. full participation in the Electoral College. Finally, the proposed amendment would have also allowed the Council of the District of Columbia, the Congress, or the people of Washington D.C. (depending on how this proposed amendment would have been interpreted) to decide whether to ratify any proposed amendment to the Constitution, or to apply to the Congress for a convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution, just as a state's legislature can according to the Constitutional amendment process. The amendment would neither have made Washington, D.C. a state, nor affected Congress's authority over it.

References

Proposed amendments to the United States Constitution


School Friends is a series of children's novels written by British author Ann Bryant. The books were published in 2008 and 2009. There are 12 books, each with one of the School Friends narrating it.

The series is based at Silver Spires, a modern-day boarding school. The first six books feature Katy, Georgie, Grace, Naomi, Jessica and Mia, who are all pupils in Year Seven at the school. Their boarding house is Hazeldean and their dormitory is Amethyst, which they solely share. The second six books feature Nicole, Izzy, Emily, Antonia, Sasha and Bryony. Their boarding house is Forest Ash and their dormitory is Emerald.

Characters

Main characters
Katy  Katy's mother is a famous actress. At her old school, everyone wanted to be her friend because they knew, so Katy keeps it secret. At the end of Book 1, she reveals her secret to Naomi, her best friend. Later in the series she tells the rest of Amethyst dorm. She loves fashion and wants to be a designer.
Georgie  Georgie loves to perform by all means and will stop at nothing to get her main part. She's dramatic and funny and her best friend is Mia. She's often gossiping away and having fun and is known for always finding an easier way to do things, although in Book 2 she goes to desperate measures in order to win a part in the school play.
Grace  Grace is a budding athlete from Thailand. She is reliable and serious - her best friend is Jessica. In Book 3, she is in a swimming gala but another participant starts sending mean messages about her on the Silver Spires Chatroom.
Naomi  Naomi is a Ghanaian princess. At her old school, everyone wanted to be her friend because they knew. She meant to keep her identity secret at Silver Spires but in Book 1 Lydia leaks it out to the rest of the school. Her best friend is Katy, who has a similar secret - her mother is a famous actress. She is known as, 'The Wise One'.
Jessica  In most of the books Jessica is called Jess. She is a budding artist whose best friend is Grace. In Book 5, she gets nervous because although she is a good painter she has a secret which turns out to be that she has dyslexia, so she has to take special classes to help her with reading and writing.
Mia  Mia is a musician whose friend is Georgie. She is sweet, friendly and don't-careish. She always looks on the bright side of life and in Book 6 uncovers a cheater.

Secondary Characters
Mrs Jennings is the matron for Hazeldean. She occasionally supervises prep and Georgie gets round her very easily.
Miss Carol is the Hazeldean housemistress and often supervises prep. She is always there for the girls.
Lydia appears greatly in Book 1 as a rival to Katie to win Naomi's friendship. Lydia stole Graces stopwatch and made the other girls think it was Katy, so she could have Naomi for herself. She is eventually found out, and uncovered as only wanting Naomi's friendship because she is a princess. She is unheard of for the rest of the series.
Cara is a year eight girl, who gets the part Georgie wanted in the School play, but later becomes ill so they end up sharing the part.
Felissa is a year seven that is jealous of Graces swimming and sports success. In book 3, she sends mean messages to Grace on the Silver Spires chat room, which upsets her.
Poppy and Ali appear in book 4. Ali is Poppy's friend and Poppy is jealous of Naomi being a princess and a model. She appears in Book 4 much more than Ali does.
Elsie is a year eleven textiles student who asked Naomi to model for her, but Elsie lies to Naomi which results in her pulling out of the fashion show. She is only heard of in book 4.
Mrs. Cardwell is the learning support teacher Jess goes to in book 5 for her dyslexia.
Bella is a participant in the Silver Spires Star Contest in Book 6. She goes on to win the show only to be uncovered as a cheat.

The books
 First Term at Silver Spires (Katy)
 Drama at Silver Spires (Georgie)
 Rivalry at Silver Spires (Grace)
 Princess of Silver Spires (Naomi)
 Secrets of Silver Spires (Jessica)
 Star of Silver Spires (Mia)
 Party at Silver Spires (Nicole)
 Dancer at Silver Spires (Izzy)
 Dreams at Silver Spires (Emily)
 Magic at Silver Spires (Antonia)
 Success at Silver Spires (Sasha)
 Mystery at Silver Spires (Bryony)

References

British children's novels
Series of children's books
Novels set in boarding schools

School Friends


Annie is a 1982 American musical comedy-drama film based on the 1977 Broadway musical of the same name by Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin and Thomas Meehan, which in turn is based on the Little Orphan Annie comic strip created by Harold Gray. Directed by John Huston and written by Carol Sobieski, the cast includes Albert Finney, Carol Burnett, Bernadette Peters, Ann Reinking, Tim Curry, Geoffrey Holder, Edward Herrmann, with Aileen Quinn as the title character. It is the first film adaptation of the musical.

Set during the Great Depression in 1933, the film tells the story of Annie, an orphan from New York City who is taken in by America's richest billionaire, Oliver Warbucks. Principal photography took place for six weeks at Monmouth University in New Jersey in 1981.

Produced by Ray Stark's Rastar and released by Columbia Pictures on May 21, 1982, Annie received mixed reviews from film critics and grossed $57 million on a $35 million budget. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Song Score and its Adaptation. A television film sequel, titled Annie: A Royal Adventure! was released in 1995.  Then it was followed by three additional adaptations of the musical. In their first film collaboration, Disney and Columbia Pictures produced a second film adaptation made-for-television in 1999. Columbia released a third film adaptation on December 19, 2014.  A fourth adaptation which was a live production of the musical was performed on December 2, 2021, on NBC.

Plot

In 1933, during the Great Depression, a young orphan named Annie is living in the Hudson Street Orphanage in New York City. It is run by Agatha Hannigan, a cruel alcoholic who forces the orphans to clean the building daily. With half of a locket as her only possession, she remains optimistic that her parents, who left her on the doorstep as a baby, will return for her. Annie sneaks out with help from laundry man, Mr. Bundles, adopting a stray dog which she names Sandy. However, Annie is caught by a police officer and escorted back to the orphanage.

Grace Farrell, secretary to billionaire Oliver Warbucks, arrives to invite an orphan to live with Warbucks for a week, to improve his public image. Annie is chosen and she and Sandy travel to Warbucks' mansion, meeting his many servants and two bodyguards, Punjab and the Asp. Warbucks, at first dismissive of Annie due to her being female, is charmed into letting her stay. He takes Annie and Grace to Radio City Music Hall to watch a movie, Camille, and Warbucks begin to develop affection for Annie. Grace urges him to adopt Annie and he meets with Miss Hannigan, convincing her to sign the adoption papers.

Warbucks reveals his plans to Annie, even offering her a new locket, but she declines. She explains the purpose of her broken locket and her hope that her parents will return with the other half. Warbucks appears on Bert Healy's radio show and offers $50,000 to find Annie's parents. This causes mass hysteria with many would-be parents appearing to claim the money. To escape the madness, Warbucks flies Annie to the White House in Washington, D.C., introducing her to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor. Roosevelt informs them of his plan to introduce a social welfare program to help America's impoverished and asks Warbucks to head it; Annie encourages him to help. Upon returning home, Annie is disheartened when Grace reveals none of the potential parents knew about the locket.

Hannigan is visited by her con artist brother Rooster and his girlfriend, Lily St. Regis; they plot to pose as Annie's parents to gain the reward. The trio searches the orphans' belongings and Hannigan reveals Annie's parents were killed in a fire; she possesses the other half of the locket. Annie's friends overhear the conversation and try sneaking out, but are discovered and locked away. Rooster and Lily succeed with the ruse, and Annie's departure from Warbucks is somber. Annie is kidnapped minutes after leaving, but her friends reach Warbucks and tell him the truth; he informs the police, beginning a city-wide search.

Annie convinces the felons to pull over, only to escape and destroy Warbucks' check. Rooster chases Annie up a raised drawbridge in an effort to kill her; when Hannigan realizes his intentions, she desperately tries to stop him, but Rooster easily knocks her out and continues climbing. Punjab rescues Annie from Rooster and reunites her with Warbucks and Grace. Rooster and Lily are arrested and Annie is officially adopted by Warbucks. At a party that the orphans, a redeemed Hannigan, and the Roosevelts attend, Warbucks gives Annie the new locket as they embrace.

Cast
 Aileen Quinn as Annie Bennett Warbucks, a 10-year-old orphan girl. Quinn was chosen out of 9,000 girls who were interviewed at casting calls in the United States, Canada and Europe.
 Albert Finney as Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks, a billionaire businessman who adopts Annie. Sean Connery and Cary Grant were also considered for the role before Finney was chosen.
 Carol Burnett as Miss Agatha "Aggy" Hannigan, a cruel alcoholic and the older sister of Rooster who manages the all-girls orphanage where Annie and the other orphans live. She is shown to create bathtub gin and engage in other illegal activities. Bette Midler was considered for the role before Burnett was chosen.
 Ann Reinking as Grace Farrell, personal secretary to Mr. Warbucks, who decides to take Annie in.
 Tim Curry as Daniel Francis "Rooster" Hannigan, Aggy's con-artist younger brother.
 Bernadette Peters as Lily St. Regis, petty thief and co-conspirator girlfriend of Rooster.
 Edward Herrmann as Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, usually portrayed in a wheelchair.
 Lois de Banzie as Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States.
 Geoffrey Holder as Punjab, Warbucks's turban-donning bodyguard, named for Pakistan's and India's Punjab province and/or Punjabi culture.
 Roger Minami as The Asp, Warbucks's Japanese chauffeur and bodyguard, who teaches Annie karate.
 Toni Ann Gisondi as Molly, a fellow orphan who is six years old and gets adopted by Warbucks and becomes Annie's little sister.
 Rosanne Sorrentino as Pepper, a 14-year-old fellow orphan who commands others, but then becomes nicer. She also gets adopted by Warbucks and becomes Annie and Molly's sister.
 Lara Berk as Tessie, a fellow orphan who is eight years old and exclaims "Oh my goodness!" throughout the film. Also, she gets adopted by Warbucks and becomes Annie, Molly and Pepper's sister.
 April Lerman as Kate, an orphan who is thirteen years old and cares for the younger orphans and often wears her hair in pigtail braids. She  gets adopted by Warbucks and becomes Annie, Molly, Pepper, and Tessie's sister.
 Robin Ignico as Duffy, an eleven year old fellow orphan who is Pepper's best friend. She gets adopted by Warbucks and becomes Annie, Molly, Pepper, Tessie and Kate's sister.
 Lucie Stewart as July, a fellow orphan who is nine years old and rarely speaks. She gets adopted by Warbucks and becomes Annie, Molly, Pepper, Tessie, Kate and Duffy's sister.
 Peter Marshall as Bert Healy, a radio show host.
 Larry Hankin as the pound man.
 Irving Metzman as Mr. Bundles, a man who works for a Chinese laundry company, whose truck Annie stows away in. Mr. Bundles is implied to be a love interest of Miss Hannigan. It is unclear whether he is portraying a stereotypically Asian role.
 Ken Swofford as Weasel, a greasy uniformed police officer who chases down Annie when she escapes. He is based on Officer Wald from the musical. He is implied to be a love interest of Miss Hannigan.
 I. M. Hobson as Drake, Warbucks's head butler who hides his allergy to dogs.
 Colleen Zenk, Mavis Ray, and Pamela Blair as Cecile, Mrs. Greer and Annette, Warbucks's maids.
 Lu Leonard as Mrs. Pugh, Warbucks's maid and cook.
 Victor Griffin as Saunders, one of Warbucks's servants.
 Angela Lee, Martika, Amanda Peterson, and Shawnee Smith as orphans/backup dancers.
 The Rockettes as Themselves (uncredited).
 Bingo the dog as Sandy, a stray dog who becomes the family pet.

Production
After winning a bidding war with Paramount Pictures, Columbia purchased the rights to the broadway musical for $9.5 million. Film producer Ray Stark wanted both John Huston and Joe Layton (while working as the director and choreographer, respectively) to also be the executive producer on the film, because it was too large an enterprise for one person. Regarding Huston being given the job of directing the first (and what would be the only) musical in his 40-year directing career, screenwriter Carol Sobieski stated: "Hiring John [Huston] is an outsider risk, and Ray's [Stark] a major gambler. He loves this kind of high risk situation." The film cost over $35 million, with some suggesting it cost as much as $59 million after marketing and distribution, making it one of the most expensive films at the time, and the most expensive project financed by Columbia Pictures up to that point.

Writing
Sobieski, who wrote the screenplay, introduced major differences between the stage musical and the film adaptation. In the stage musical, it is Christmas when Miss Hannigan, Rooster and Lily are caught at the Warbucks mansion by the United States Secret Service thus foiling their plan to kidnap Annie, while in the film (due to summertime shooting) Annie is kidnapped and on the eve of the Fourth of July, leading to Warbucks organizing a citywide search and a climactic ending on the B&O Bridge. Punjab and The Asp, Warbucks's servants/bodyguards, from the original comic strip, appear in the film in supporting roles.

Miss Hannigan's redemption at the end is also a new development on the part of the film – in the musical, Miss Hannigan briefly balks at Rooster's intention to make Annie "disappear" with his switchblade, but is soon lured by his promises of a life on Easy Street. In Meehan's 1980 novelization, Miss Hannigan shows no qualms whatsoever about Annie being killed. In both of these media, Miss Hannigan ends up being arrested alongside Rooster and Lily at the Warbucks mansion.

The film also featured five new songs, "Dumb Dog", "Sandy", "Let's Go to the Movies", "Sign" and "We Got Annie", and cut "We'd like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover", "N.Y.C", "You Won't Be an Orphan for Long", "Something Was Missing", "Annie" and "New Deal for Christmas". In addition, the song "Maybe" has two reprises whereas "Little Girls" and "Easy Street" do not.

Martin Charnin, the lyricist of Annie, was not impressed with the cinematic interpretation. In a 1996 interview, he dismissed the adaptation and its production. "The movie distorted what this musical was", Charnin reported. "And we were culpable for the reason that we did not exercise any kind of creative control because we sold the rights for a considerable amount of money." Charnin even said that Huston, who had never directed a musical before, and producer Ray Stark made major changes in the film that destroyed the essence of Annie. Warbucks, played by Finney, "was an Englishman who screamed". Hannigan, played by Burnett, was "a man-crazy drunk", and Annie was "cute-ed up". Worse, the emotional relationship between Annie and Warbucks was distorted. They even downplayed the hit song "Tomorrow" because "Stark thought it was corny".

Filming

Principal photography took place in 1981 over the course of six weeks at Monmouth College, now Monmouth University, in West Long Branch, New Jersey, which has two mansions that were used in the film, one of which is the Shadow Lawn Mansion. The NX Bridge, an abandoned railroad bridge over the Passaic River in Newark, was used for location shooting of one of the climactic scenes.

Many of the street sets were filmed at Warner Bros. Burbank Studios, 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California. Production designer Dale Hennesy overhauled the old "Tenement Street" back lot set at Warner Bros. by outfitting many of the New York styled apartment and store front facades with actual New York fire escapes and other treatments specifically brought in for this production. Hennesy died during filming and the back lot set was renamed "Hennesy Street" in honor of the late production designer.

Originally, the song "Easy Street" was going to be the biggest musical number in the film. For this purpose, a specially-created outdoor street set was built, costing more than $1 million. It took one week to shoot the scene, but on reviewing the dailies, the scene was considered to be "overstuffed" and "sour." Therefore, a re-shoot was undertaken nearly two months after principal filming had been completed. The scene was replaced with a version shot indoors in a style that mimicked the ambience portrayed in the original stage musical.

Soundtrack

Annie is a soundtrack album for the 1982 film of the same name.

Release
Annie opened theatrically on May 21, 1982, in 14 theatres, including in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Toronto. It expanded to 1,102 theatres on June 18, 1982.

Reception

Critical response
Annie received mixed reviews upon its release. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 49% based on 35 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "John Huston proves an odd choice to direct, miring Annie in a sluggish, stagebound mess of an adaptation, but the kids are cute and the songs are memorable." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 39 out of 100 based on 10 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and reported that Annie was "so rigorously machine-made, so relentlessly formula" that the film "is not about anything" despite its series of scenarios, but nonetheless "I sort of enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed the energy that was visible on the screen, and the sumptuousness of the production numbers, and the good humor of several of the performances -- especially those by Albert Finney, as Daddy Warbucks, and Carol Burnett, as the wicked orphanage supervisor, Miss Hannigan. Aileen Quinn sort of grew on me, too." Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "'Annie' is far from a great film but, like the Music Hall in the good old days, it is immaculately maintained and almost knocks itself out trying to give the audience its money's worth. They don't build movies like this anymore." Variety wrote, "Whatever indefinable charm the stage show has is completely lost in this lumbering and largely uninteresting and uninvolving exercise, where the obvious waste reaches almost Pentagonian proportions." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "a bit of a letdown," writing that Quinn "often comes across as one of those self-conscious stage kids" and that the four new songs "are not the least bit memorable," but Finney gives the best performance in the film as "he steadily turns into a quite wonderful father figure." Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film "staggers under monstrous production numbers, orphans doing gymnastic flips, dancing maids and butlers and the Radio City Music Hall complete with Rockettes ... But a kid with Annie's moxie deserves more. Or perhaps less. What she deserves is an atmosphere of innocence, warmth and inventiveness, to let the film generate the joy that must have enveloped theater audiences over the past five years." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post panned the film as "Overproduced and underinspired," with Burnett's performance "the closest thing to a saving grace." Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker that the story "cries out for a cockeyed fairy-tale tone" but instead "has the feel of a manufactured romp ... Every sequence seems to be trying too hard to be upbeat and irresistible, and it's all ungainly."

Box office
Annie grossed $5.3 million in its first wide weekend, ranking number 5 at the US box office. The film grossed $57 million in the United States and Canada against a budget of $35 million, making it the tenth highest-grossing film of 1982. However, due to its high cost, it failed to make a profit for Columbia Pictures upon release.

Awards and nominations

Home media
The film was released on VHS, Betamax and CED Videodisc on November 5, 1982, by RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video. It was re-issued in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1994, and 1997 (in a "Broadway Tribute Edition" to coincide with the original play's Broadway 20th anniversary revival that year). There were two widescreen LaserDiscs released, one in 1989 and another in 1994. The film was released in a widescreen DVD edition on December 12, 2000.

A "Special Anniversary Edition" DVD was released on January 13, 2004 (four days before producer Stark's death). Despite the fact that the first DVD was widescreen, the DVD was in pan and scan (but with DTS sound). Reviewing the disc for DVD Talk, Glenn Erickson, while praising the film overall, called the pan and scan transfer an "abomination that's grainy and lacking in color." He also noted that the short retrospective featurette with Ms. Quinn contained clips from the film in the correct aspect ratio. Erickson also called the music video of "It's the Hard-Knock Life" by Play "pretty dreary" and attacked the other, child-oriented extras by saying "Musicals and kids' films aren't just for tots ... and this disc is little more than a headache." However, several countries in Region 2 received widescreen versions of this edition including the United Kingdom. The film was released as a "sing-along edition" on Blu-ray on October 2, 2012, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the film and the 35th anniversary of the Broadway version set a revival in November 2012.

On October 25, 2022, the film was released on 4K Blu-ray as part of "Columbia Classics Collection: Volume 3," including the full 1932 film Little Orphan Annie and several new special features for the newly-remastered Blu-ray.

Television
The film had its national television debut on February 24, 1986, on the NBC Monday Night Movie. To accommodate the broadcast restrictions, the film was shown in pan-and-scan and had its running time cut from 128 minutes to 96 minutes to run in the two-hour time slot with commercials.

Adaptations

Comic book adaptation
Marvel Comics published a comic book adaptation of the film by writer Tom DeFalco and artists Win Mortimer and Vince Colletta in Marvel Super Special #23 (Summer 1982). The adaptation was also available as an Annie Treasury Edition and as a limited series.

India
 The 1983 Malayalam movie Ente Mamattukkuttiyammakku was reported to be inspired by this movie.

 The 1993 Hindi film King Uncle, starring Jackie Shroff, Shahrukh Khan, Anu Agarwal and Naghma, is loosely based on this film.

Annie: A Royal Adventure! (1995)

A sequel, Annie: A Royal Adventure! was a made-for-television sequel that aired on ABC on November 18, 1995. It starred Ashley Johnson, Joan Collins, George Hearn and Ian McDiarmid. Aside from a reprise of "Tomorrow," there are no songs in it. No cast members from the 1982 film appeared in this sequel. Rooster, Lily and Grace Farrell were cut out of the sequel.

In the film, Warbucks (Hearn), Annie (Johnson), an eccentric scientist (McDiarmid) and one of the orphans travel to England where Warbucks is to be knighted by the King. However, the kids get mixed up in the scheme of an evil noblewoman (Collins) to blow up Buckingham Palace while all the heirs to the throne are present for Warbucks's knighting, thus making her queen.

Annie (1999)

A made-for-TV movie version was broadcast on ABC on November 7, 1999, starring Kathy Bates as Miss Hannigan, Victor Garber as Daddy Warbucks, Alan Cumming as Rooster, Audra McDonald as Grace, Kristin Chenoweth as Lily, and newcomer Alicia Morton as Annie. Produced by The Walt Disney Company in association with Columbia TriStar Television, it received generally positive reviews and high ratings. It also earned two Emmy Awards and a 1999 George Foster Peabody Award. Although truer to the original stage musical than the 1982 version (as well as having a more comedic tone than the 1982 version's slightly dark one), it condensed much of the full story in order to make it more watchable for children. The film also featured a special appearance by Andrea McArdle, star of the original Broadway production.

The film has aired on cable on Hallmark Channel, ABC Family and Starz after its premiere on ABC.

Annie (2014 film)

On January 20, 2011, it was announced that Will Smith was planning to produce Annie, a contemporary remake of the 1982 film. On May 25, 2012, it was announced that Jay-Z was writing new songs for the film. In January 2013, Sony Pictures selected Will Gluck to direct the film. Oscar nominee, Quvenzhané Wallis was cast as the title character. The film was released on December 19, 2014, to generally negative reviews from critics yet was commercially successful, earning $133 million on a $65 million budget.

References

External links

1982 films
1980s musical comedy-drama films
1982 children's films
1982 comedy-drama films
1982 musical films
American children's comedy films
American children's drama films
American musical comedy-drama films
Columbia Pictures films
Cultural depictions of Franklin D. Roosevelt
Cultural depictions of Eleanor Roosevelt
1980s English-language films
Films about adoption
Films about child abuse
Films about animal cruelty
Films about orphans
Films based on adaptations
Films based on American comics
Films based on comic strips
Films based on musicals
Films directed by John Huston
Films produced by Ray Stark
Films set in 1933
Films set in the 1930s
Films set in New York City
Films set in Washington, D.C.
Films shot in New Jersey
Films shot in Newark, New Jersey
Great Depression films
Golden Raspberry Award winning films
Films based on Little Orphan Annie
Live-action films based on comics
Films about child labour
Films set in a movie theatre
1980s American films
Films with screenplays by Carol Sobieski
1980s musical films

Annie (1982 film)


Nonthaburi () is ane o the central provinces (changwat) o Thailand. Neighborin provinces are (frae north clockwise) Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya, Pathum Thani, Bangkok an Nakhon Pathom.

Geography
Nonthaburi is locatit directly northwast o Bangkok on the Chao Phraya river. The province is pairt o the greater Bangkok Metropolitan Aurie.  In maist parts it is as urbanized as the caipital, an the boondary atween the twa provinces is nearly unrecognisable.

History
Nonthaburi wis declared a ceety in the middle o the 16t century, which wis previously a village named Talat Khwan. Durin the reign o King Prasat Thong, a canal wis dug tae create a shortcut o the flow o the Chao Phraya. The river chynged its flow intae the new canal, which is still the riverbed today. In 1665 King Narai built a fortress, as the shorter riverway wis givin enemies an easier way tae the caipital Ayutthaya. The toun wis then an aa moved near the fortress.

Frae 1943 tae 1946 the province wis incorporatit intae Bangkok.

Seembols
The provincial seal shows earthenware, a traditional product frae Nonthaburi. The Provincial flouer an tree is the Yellow flame tree (Peltophorum pterocarpum).

The provincial slogan translates tae Grand Ryal Mansion, renouned Suan Somdet, Ko Kret's pottery, famous ancient temples, tasty durians, an the bonnie government office. The ryal mansion refers tae Phra Tamnak Nonthaburi in Mueang Nonthaburi district, the residence o Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn; Suan Somdet is a water garden in Pak Kret district. The provincial administration buildin ance received an award as the maist bonnie such building bi the Meenistry o Interior.

Provinces o Thailand

Nonthaburi Province


GANDALF was an acronym (Green Anarchist and ALF) for the 1997 trial in the UK of the editors of Green Anarchist magazine, as well as two prominent British supporters of the Animal Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group (ALF SG), on charges of conspiracy to incite criminal damage.

Beginning in 1995, the Hampshire police under "Operation Washington" began a series of at least 56 raids, which resulted in the August–November 1997 trial in Portsmouth of Green Anarchist editors Steven Booth, Saxon Burchnall-Wood, Noel Molland, and Paul Rogers, as well as the ALF UK press officer Robin Webb and ALF SG newsletter editor Simon Russell. The defendants organized the GANDALF defence campaign. The editors of Green Anarchist—Molland, Burchnall-Wood and Booth—were sentenced to three years in jail for conspiracy to incite criminal damage. After four and a half months, all three were released pending an appeal, and their convictions were later overturned.

Notes

Green anarchism
Animal Liberation Front
1997 in United Kingdom case law
1997 in the United Kingdom

GANDALF trial


Beaska is a coat made of reindeer fur used by the Sami people, particularly in Torne. In Gällivare beaska means thicker fur and is mainly used by the richer people.  In Northern Sami language it could also mean newer fur as it was of young reindeer calves, which are themselves called peschki in some dialects. The Norwegian word for fur is pesk,  which comes from päsket- to cut. The Sami people also use the word muoddá (In Swedish: mudd).

See also
 Four Winds hat
 Luhkka
 Gákti

References

Coats (clothing)
Sámi clothing

Beaska


The Festival d'Avignon, or Avignon Festival, is an annual arts festival held in the French city of Avignon every summer in July in the courtyard of the Palais des Papes as well as in other locations of the city. Founded in 1947 by Jean Vilar, it is the oldest existent festival in France. Alongside the official festival, the "In" one, a number of shows are presented in Avignon at the same time of the year and are known as the "Off".

In 2008, some 950 shows were performed during three weeks.

The Birth of a Festival

1947, The Week of Scenic Arts

Art critic Christian Zervos and poet René Char organized a modern art exhibition held in the main chapel of the Pope's Palace in Avignon. In that setting, they asked Jean Vilar, actor, director, theatre director, and future festival founder, to present Meurtre dans la cathédrale which he adapted in 1945.

After refusing, Vilar proposed three plays: William Shakespeare's Richard II, a play almost unknown in France at that time, La Terrasse de midi, by Maurice Clavel, then unknown author, and L'Histoire de Tobie et de Sara by Paul Claudel.

The "In" Festival

The  festival is organised by a non-profit organisation (since 1980), which is administered by a board of trustees composed of: the French state, the city of Avignon, the Département of Vaucluse, the Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, and seven public figures competent in the field of theatre.
Amongst other places, the "In" Festival is performed in the "Cour d'Honneur" – the honours courtyard – of the Palais des Papes, the place of residence of the Avignon papacy during most of the 14th century.

The "Off" Festival

The "Off" festival is also organised by a non-profit organisation composed mostly of theatre companies and is performed in theaters schools, streets and all places suitable for performing.

History

The Festival d'Avignon was founded by Jean Vilar in 1947. He was invited to present his first great successful play – Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot in the Palace of the Popes. At the same moment and at the same place, an exhibition of contemporary paintings and sculptures was organized by Christian Zervos, an art critic and collector, and by René Char, the poet.

Vilar initially refused the invitation, as for him the Cour d'Honneur of the Pope's Palace was too vast and "shapeless" and he also lost the performance rights of the play. However, he proposed three creations: Shakespeare's Richard II, one of Bard's plays that was little known at the time in France; Paul Claudel's Tobie et Sara ('Tobie and Sara'), and Maurice Clavel's second play, La Terrasse de Midi ('The Midday Terrace'). The very first Festival d'Avignon in September 1947 set the scene as a showcase for unknown work and modern scripts.

Upon obtaining initial success, the festival began enjoying the contribution of many young talents. Among the actors and actresses invited by Vilar, one finds the following: Jean Négroni, Germaine Montero, Alain Cuny, Michel Bouquet, Jean-Pierre Jorris, Silvia Montfort, Jeanne Moreau, Daniel Sorano, Maria Casarès, Philippe Noiret, Monique Chaumette, Jean Le Poulain, Charles Denner, Jean Deschamps, Georges Wilson, and Gérard Philipe.

The festival's success grew, in spite of criticisms, which were at times virulent. Vilar's idea of a "popular theatre" moved critics to refer to Vilar as "Stalinist", "fascist", "populist", or "cosmopolitan".

On the other hand, Vilar's conception of the theatre remained conservative with respect to competing conceptions developed especially in the course of the 1960s. On the crest of the wave of contemporary tendencies to revolutionize theatrical practices, in 1966 Avignon's Théâtre des Carmes, co-founded by André Benedetto and Bertrand Hurault, staged a festival "Off", unofficial and independent. The following year, Benedetto's theatre was joined by other kindred theatrical companies.

In response to the "Off" challenge, in 1967 Jean Vilar gave rise to the festival of La Cour d'honneur du Palais des papes ("Court of Honor of the Popes' Palace"). Thenceforth, numerous further sites will be chosen to stage the festival's theatrical representations.

Vilar directed the festival until his death in 1971. In that year, Vilar's "In" festival included thirty-eight shows.

2020 edition and COVID-19 pandemic
The 2020 edition was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Strikes during the Festival

Due to the anti-authoritarian protest movements of May 1968, the 22nd edition of the Festival of Avignon hosted virtually no French shows, halving the number of planned shows down from a total of 83.  Relatively unaffected were the shows of the "Living Theatre", Maurice Béjart's representations at the Court of Honor, as well as various film viewings taking advantage of that same year's cancellation of the Festival of Cannes.

Béjart's show of 19 July in the Court of Honor was disrupted by Saul Gottlieb, a viewer who entered the stage to order Béjart to halt his show.  Towards the end of the show, the comedians of the "Théâtre du Chêne Noir," from the "Off" festival, erupted on the scene, forcing Béjart's dancers to improvise around them.

In 2003, a total of 750 shows were anticipated, prior to the festival's being cancelled for the year due to strikes by the show business's "casual workers" ("intermittents") protesting to reform indemnification laws. Approximately one hundred of the "Off" festival's shows were cancelled, as well.

On 3 July 2014, the festival committee voted by a 224–110 margin (4 votes of abstention) in favor of a strike during the event in support of the recent claims of the intermittent workers about their unemployment insurance.

Research archives
Archives on the works of Jean Vilar and the totality of the 3,000 representations programmed by the Festival of Avignon since its 1947 debut are conserved at Maison Jean-Vilar, located in Avignon at 8, rue de Mons, Montée Paul-Puaux.  The Maison houses most notably a library, videotheque, expositions and database.

The Association Jean Vilar publishes the  review journal, Les Cahiers Jean Vilar, which inscribes the thought of the festival's ideator in a resolutely contemporary context, analysing the place of theatre in society, as well as political stakes involved in theatrical production.

References

External links

 Avignon Festival website
 Avignon "Off" theater festival website
 Festival d'Avignon 2011 Dossier by Radio France Internationale English Service

Theatre festivals in France
Tourist attractions in Avignon
Provence
Arts festivals in France
Tourist attractions in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Annual events in France
1947 establishments in France
Festivals established in 1947

Festival d'Avignon


The "Four Policemen" was a postwar council with the Big Four that US President Franklin Roosevelt proposed as a guarantor of world peace. Their members were called the Four Powers during World War II and were the four major Allies of World War II: the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. Roosevelt repeatedly used the term "Four Policemen" starting in 1942.

The Four Policemen would be responsible for keeping order within their spheres of influence: Britain in its empire and Western Europe, the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and the central Eurasian landmass, China in East Asia and the Western Pacific; and the United States in the Western Hemisphere. As a preventive measure against new wars, countries other than the Four Policemen were to be disarmed. Only the Four Policemen would be allowed to possess any weapons more powerful than a rifle.

Initially, Roosevelt envisioned the new postwar international organization would be formed several years after the war. Later, he came to view creating the United Nations as the most important goal for the entire war effort. His vision for the organization consisted of three branches: an executive branch with the Big Four, an enforcement branch composed of the same four great powers acting as the Four Policemen or Four Sheriffs, and an international assembly representing other nations.

As a compromise with internationalist critics, the Big Four nations became the permanent members of the UN Security Council, with significantly less power than had been envisioned in the Four Policemen proposal. When the United Nations was officially established later in 1945, France was in due course added as the fifth permanent member of the Security Council because of the insistence of Churchill.

History

Background
After World War I, the United States pursued a policy of isolationism and declined to join the League of Nations in 1919. Roosevelt had been a supporter of the League of Nations but, by 1935, he told his foreign policy adviser Sumner Welles: "The League of Nations has become nothing more than a debating society, and a poor one at that!". Roosevelt criticized the League for representing the interests of too many nations. He came to favor an approach to global peace secured through the unified efforts of the world's great powers, rather than through the Wilsonian notions of international consensus and collaboration that guided the League of Nations.

The idea that great powers should "police" the world had been discussed by President Roosevelt as early as August 1941, during his first meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. When the Atlantic Charter was issued, Roosevelt had ensured that the charter omitted mentioning any American commitment towards the establishment of a new international body after the war. He was reluctant to publicly announce his plans for creating a postwar international body, aware of the risk that the American people might reject his proposals, and he did not want to repeat Woodrow Wilson's struggle to convince the Senate to approve American membership in the League of Nations.

Roosevelt's proposal was to create a new international body led by a "trusteeship" of great powers that would oversee smaller countries. In September 1941, he wrote:

Despite a "desultory" first effort, the U.S. State Department's postwar planning had been in abeyance for most of 1940 and 1941. Following the Atlantic Conference, a directive on postwar planning was prepared by the State Department by mid-October, which was delivered to the President in late December.

Plans for the Four Policemen

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 led to a change in Roosevelt's position. He transformed his trusteeship proposal into a proposal for Four Policementhe United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and Chinato enforce the peace after the war for several years while other nations, friend and foe, would be disarmed. Roosevelt made his first references to the Four Policemen proposal in early 1942. This would not preclude the eventual formation of a worldwide organisation of nations "for the purpose of full discussion" provided "management" was left to the Four Policemen.

He presented his postwar plans to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who had arrived in Washington on May 29 to discuss the possibility of launching a second front in Europe. The President said to Molotov that "he could not visualize another League of Nations with 100 different signatories; there were simply too many nations to satisfy, hence it was a failure and would be a failure". Roosevelt told Molotov that the Big Four must unite after the war to police the world and disarm aggressor states. When Molotov asked about the role of other countries, Roosevelt answered by opining that too many "policemen" could lead to infighting, but he was open to the idea of allowing other allied countries to participate. A memorandum of the conference summarizes their conversation:

Roosevelt and Molotov continued their discussion of the Four Policemen in a second meeting on June 1. Molotov informed the President that Stalin was willing to support Roosevelt's plans for maintaining postwar peace through the Four Policemen and enforced disarmament. Roosevelt also raised the issue of postwar decolonization. He suggested that former colonies should undergo a period of transition under the governance of an international trusteeship prior to their independence.

China was brought in as a member of the Big Four and a future member of the Four Policemen. Roosevelt was in favor of recognizing China as a great power because he was certain that the Chinese would side with the Americans against the Soviets. He said to British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, "In any serious conflict of policy with Russia, [China] would undoubtedly line up on our side." As it was before the Chinese Civil War ensued, he did not mean the Communist China, but the Republic of China. The President believed that a pro-American China would be useful for the United States should the Americans, Soviets, and Chinese agree to jointly occupy Japan and Korea after the war. When Molotov voiced concerns about the stability of China, Roosevelt responded by saying that the combined "population of our nations and friends was well over a billion people".

Churchill objected to Roosevelt's inclusion of China as one of the Big Four because he feared that the Americans were trying to undermine Britain's colonial holdings in Asia. In October 1942, Churchill told Eden that Republican China represented a "faggot vote on the side of the United States in any attempt to liquidate the British overseas empire." Eden shared this view with Churchill and expressed skepticism that China, which was then in the midst of a civil war, could ever return to a stable nation. Roosevelt responded to Churchill's criticism by telling Eden that "China might become a very useful power in the Far East to help police Japan" and that he was fully supportive of offering more aid to China.

Formation of the United Nations

On New Year's Day 1942, the representatives of Allied "Big Four", the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China, signed a short document which later came to be known as the Declaration by United Nations and the next day the representatives of twenty-two other nations added their signatures.

President Roosevelt initiated post-war plans for the creation of a new and more durable international organization that would replace the former League of Nations. Roosevelt's Four Policemen proposal received criticism from liberal internationalists who wanted power to be more evenly distributed among nations. Internationalists were concerned that the Four Policemen could lead to a new Quadruple Alliance.

A new plan for the United Nations was drafted by the State Department in April 1944. It kept the emphasis on great power solidarity that was central to Roosevelt's Four Policemen proposal for the United Nations. The members of the Big Four would serve as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Each of the four permanent members would be given a United Nations Security Council veto power, which would override any UN resolution that went against the interests of one of the Big Four. However, the State Department had compromised with the liberal internationalists. Membership eligibility was widened to include all nation states fighting against the Axis powers instead of a select few.

Roosevelt had been a supporter of the League of Nations back in 1919–20, but was determined to avoid the mistakes Woodrow Wilson had made. The United Nations was FDR's highest postwar priority. He insisted on full coordination with the Republican leadership. He made sure that leading Republicans were on board, especially Senators Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, and Warren Austin of Vermont. In a broad sense, Roosevelt believed that the UN could solve the minor problems and provide the chief mechanism to resolve any major issues that arose among the great powers, all of whom would have a veto. Roosevelt was especially interested in international protection of human rights, and in this area his wife played a major role as well.

The Dumbarton Oaks Conference convened in August 1944 to discuss plans for the postwar United Nations with delegations from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt considered his most important legacy the creation of the United Nations, making a permanent organization out of the wartime Alliance of the same name. He was the chief promoter of the United Nations idea.

The Big Four were the only four sponsoring countries of the San Francisco Conference of 1945 and their heads of the delegations took turns as chairman of the plenary meetings. During this conference, the Big Four and their allies signed the Charter of the United Nations.

Legacy
In the words of a former Undersecretary General of the UN, Sir Brian Urquhart:

See also
 American Century
Diplomatic history of World War II
 Global policeman
 Grand Alliance (World War II)
List of Allied World War II conferences

References

Citations

Sources
Print

Online

External links
 "Instrumental Internationalism: The American Origins of the United Nations, 1940–3" by Stephen Wertheim
 "US: UN" by Peter Gowan

1940s introductions
4 (number)
China and the United Nations
History of the United Nations
Politics of World War II
Soviet Union and the United Nations
Soviet Union–United States relations
United Kingdom and the United Nations
United Nations coalitions and unofficial groups
United States and the United Nations

Four Policemen


Kuala Lumpur is reputable for its vibrant shopping scene. Tourism is a big industry in Malaysia, raking in billions in tourist revenue annually, hence many malls have sprouted over the years. There are also a number of markets in Petaling Street, Kuala Lumpur's historic Chinatown that draw both locals and international tourists.

Highlights

Central Market

Central Market is a shopping area dedicated to local arts and crafts. It sells a multitude of colourful batiks, the traditional dressing of ethnic Malay Malaysians and other souvenirs. Besides that, Central Market also sells sarees and cheongsams among other cultural legacies of Malaysia's diverse ethnic minorities. One can also find religious-motivated arts and other trinkets inspired by Buddhism and Hinduism. Traditional Malay craft in the form of local daggers (keris), beautifully embellished woodcarvings, traditional kites, songkets among other items. There are plans to evolve this place into an art colony.

Night markets

Petaling Street

Petaling Street (Simplified Chinese: 茨厂街) The name is called 'Chee Cheong Kai' (Cantonese) which means starch factory street is reminiscent of the days where tapioca would be grounded here. This is the Chinatown of Malaysia, there are plenty of counterfeit luxury goods, clothes and shoes sold here. Asian fashion are sold here at cheap prices. Traditional Chinese medicines and China-imported books are aplenty in the Chinese bookstores the surrounding Petaling Street. There are plenty of delicious Chinese food and delicacies and local fruits sold here. Haggling is necessary to obtain the best bargains. It is opened into the wee hours of the morning.

Lorong Tuanku Abdul Rahman

It is only opened once a week on Saturdays from 5 – 10 pm—an exciting place to trawl for casual attire, local products, and local delicacies. The fashion featured here is more conservative as the products are targeted at the local Muslim Malay population. Nonetheless, this is the ideal place to buy silks and other quality materials. Many Malay fashion houses are located here. Prices here are cheap if one knows how to bargain. Colourful baju kurung and baju kebaya- the traditional clothing of ethnic Malays- can be found here. The headscarf are also sold here. Luxury fakes, T-shirts, jeans, crafts made of ceramics and pewter are ubiquitous at designated sections of this night market. There are a couple of shopping complexes located nearby.

Brickfields

This is the Little India of Malaysia. Traditionally the focal point of the Indian colony of Kuala Lumpur, there are plenty to see and buy here.

Bukit Bintang

Bukit Bintang is the main designated retail artery of Kuala Lumpur. It has the highest concentration of malls in Kuala Lumpur. Besides modern upmarket retailers, this area also features night markets retailing arts and crafts, counterfeit goods among other souvenirs.

List of notable shopping malls
Malls that are categorised into classes are highlights more mainstream and patronised.

City Centre
Pavilion Kuala Lumpur (upper)
Suria KLCC (high-end)
Starhill Gallery (high-end)
Fahrenheit 88 (middle)
LaLaport Bukit Bintang City Centre (middle)
Lot 10 (middle)
Low Yat Plaza (middle)
SOGO KL (middle)
Avenue K (middle)
Intermark Mall (middle)
Berjaya Times Square (bargain)
Sungei Wang Plaza (bargain)
Sunway Putra Mall
Great Eastern Mall
The LINC KL
The Weld
Quill City Mall
Shoppes At Four Season Place
The Exchange TRX (opening soon)
118 Mall (opening soon)

Greater Kuala Lumpur

Mid Valley City

The Garden (upper) and Mid Valley Megamall (middle) are located in bustling Greater KL, along the fringes of the city proper. They are both connected by sky bridges, each catering to different segments of shoppers. The Gardens is an upscale mall hosting designer labels the likes of Louis Vuitton, Marks and Spencer, Nine West, ALDO, Geox, ECCO, Lancel, Burberry, DKNY, GAP, ESPRIT, Armani Exchange, Hush Puppies and Hugo Boss, it is anchored by Singapore-based Robinsons and Japanese retailer Isetan while Mid Valley Megamall caters to the mainly middle-class segment with high-street labels coexisting side-by-side with local retailers. The malls are well-patronised by locals. There are flea markets on weekends in Mid Valley Megamall, where arts and crafts, food, trinkets and souvenirs are sold.

Sunway Pyramid

Sunway Pyramid (middle) is a huge Egyptian-themed retail mall nestled in a mixed integrated resort that features a wet/dry Wild West-inspired theme park. The retail podium can be reached through the Federal Highway and is located in Bandar Sunway. The mall has distinct Egyptian aesthetics, including pyramids, sphinx, its walls in-scripted with hieroglyphics. The clothes sold here are more towards the young and trendy. The mall is zoned into various themed sections, including Asian Avenue and Marrakesh. The brands sold here are a mix of high street brands like Dorothy Perkins, Marks and Spencer, GUESS, [Springfield, Timberland, ZARA, PUMA, Lacoste, MANGO and Coach with lesser-known local and regional brands. Malaysia's first ice-skating rink is located here.

Bangsar Village

Bangsar Village (middle-upper) is located in Bangsar and positioned as a small upmarket neighbourhood mall catering to the large expatriate population of Kuala Lumpur. Prices here are a notch higher by local standards.

Empire Shopping Gallery Subang (NU Empire)

Empire Gallery Subang (middle-upper) is an upmarket neighbourhood mall located in the outskirts of KL, in Subang Jaya. It can be reached by the Federal Highway from Kuala Lumpur. It is small in size and features several international brands alongside exclusive local batik and clothing. It is anchored by a relatively small Tangs departmental store.

1 Utama

1 Utama is a (middle-upper) mall borders Kuala Lumpur in Petaling Jaya. It is defined as a large-scale neighbourhood mall largely occupied with locally grown and regional retail startups and establishments. This behemoth however also features American staples the likes of DKNY, Lacoste, florsheim, Massimo Dutti, Forever 21, Coach, Brooks Brothers, GAP, Uniqlo, Cotton On, Polo Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger.

KL Eco City Mall

Sunway Velocity

IOI City Mall

See also

 List of shopping malls in Malaysia
 Lists of shopping malls
 Shopping mall

References

External links

 Official site of Pavilion KL
Official website of KL Eco City Mall
 KL shopping guide
 Malaysia One-stop Shopping Mall Directory
 KL shopping guide

Shopping
Economy of Kuala Lumpur
Retailing in Kuala Lumpur

Shopping in Kuala Lumpur


Pilota Valenciana or Valencian pilota (pilota means ball in Valencian) is a traditional handball sport played in the Valencian Community. Its origins are not known, but seems to be related to the French Jeu de paume.

Rules vary from area to area but the common trait is that the ball is struck with a bare, or almost bare, hand (only some minimal protection is applied in some versions of the sport). The general rule involves two teams made from two up to five players each (the numbers depend on the particular version played).

The second characteristic is that it is not played against a wall. Instead, similarly to modern tennis, two individuals or teams are placed face to face separated either by a line on the ground or a net.
A distinctive trait of Valencian pilota is that the spectators are often seated or standing very close to the court which means that they may be impacted by the ball and thus become an (unwilling) part of the game.

History

Valencian pilota origins are not known with certainty, but it's commonly supposed to be a variant from the middle-aged Jeu de paume, as many other European handball sports (Basque laxoa, French Longue paume, Frisian handball and Italian Pallone) similar to the actual Valencian llargues variant.

Jeu de paume is documented at Paris in 1292 since there were 13 ball workshops and many tripots (courtfields), it was first played with the hands, and the scoring system was very similar to the current Valencian one. There were so many resemblances with the Valencian pilota sport that, in the 16th century Joan Lluís Vives compared both games in his Dialogues and claimed them to be exactly the same despite some minor differences.

Other websites
 Valencian pilota federation
 News about Valencian pilota
 News and shop about Valencian pilota
 Online one-on-one Escala i corda game, videos and 3D views of a ''trinquet
 Personal site of Pedro, a Valencian pilotari
 II Handball World Meeting
 History of the Pilota, PDF

Videos
Youtube: 7 videos featuring the 1993 Escala i Corda Individual final match, Genovés I vs. Sarasol I
Pilota valenciana: Joc i tradició. 15 minutes documentary

Handball
Sport in Spain

Valencian pilota


Heinrich Wangnereck (July 1595 – 11 November 1664) was a Catholic theologian, preacher, author. He was born in Munich.

The extant sketches of his life give no uniform information respecting the dates of events; it is, however, unanimously stated that when sixteen years old he entered the novitiate of the upper German province of the Society of Jesus, at Landsberg, took the usual course of instruction, and in addition was for a time teacher of the lowest class at the gymnasium.

His chief occupation was that of a professor of philosophy and theology at the University of Dillingen, where he was chancellor, according to one statement, for twenty-four years. In addition to teaching, he was also a noted preacher. In 1655 he was sent to Lindau as superior and missioner, but after five years returned to Dillingen where he was chancellor until his death, which followed a sudden stroke of apoplexy at table.

It is said that his reputation for learning and ability was so widespread that many secular and spiritual princes, bishops, and prelates of Germany asked his advice in the most important matters. His works, of which twenty are known, are chiefly on theological subjects. He also took part in the political controversies of the period, but not always to the satisfaction of authority, as there is record of a punishment inflicted upon him by the general of the Society because he had spoken disrespectfully of the Duke of Bavaria.

His first small work, "Notae in confessiones S. Augustini", published in 1630, has retained its popularity up to the present time; in 1907 a fourth edition of it appeared.

Wangereck died at Dillingen.

17th-century German Catholic theologians
1595 births
1664 deaths
17th-century German Jesuits
German male non-fiction writers
17th-century German writers
17th-century German male writers

Heinrich Wangnereck


From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is a novel by E. L. Konigsburg that won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1968.

Story

This book tells the story of Claudia Kincaid, an 11-year-old girl who feels unappreciated by her parents.  She decides to run away from home just long enough to show her family what they would be missing without her.  Unfortunately, she does not enjoy hardship or discomfort, so running away has lots of problems.  To solve this problem, Claudia decides to stay at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She tells her brother Jamie to accompany her: he's quiet, but most importantly, he has a secret stash of cash he's gotten by cheating at card games with his best friend, Bruce.

Much of the first part of the novel details how Claudia and Jamie settle in at the museum: blending in with school groups on field trips during the day to get a free presentation, hiding in the restroom at closing time to stay there, and emerging at night to bathe in the fountain and sleep on antique beds.  During their stay, they become fascinated with the newest exhibit: a beautiful statue of an angel, thought to have been crafted by Michelangelo.  Their time and money are spent trying to find the secret of the statue, hidden somewhere in the unorganized files of the statue's old owner, Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who lives in Farmington, Connecticut.
She says,"You can know the secret only if you can find the truth from my mixed up files." They find the truth under the file "Bologna". They go home, and by their choice, Jamie and Claudia turn out to be the grandchildren of Mrs Frankweiler's lawyer, Saxonberg.

In other media
This novel was made into a movie in 1973, starring Ingrid Bergman in the title role. It later became a made-for-TV movie in 1995, starring Lauren Bacall in the title role.

In the television series The Simpsons, the plot was mimicked in the episodes "Smart and Smarter," in which Lisa hides in a local science museum in embarrassment at finding her baby sister is smarter than she, and the episode "Last Tap Dance in Springfield" features Bart and Milhouse hiding out in the shopping mall for one week while on a camping trip. The movie The Royal Tenenbaums has a scene in which characters Margot and Richie hide in a museum; in the movie's DVD commentary, Wes Anderson states that this was an homage to the novel, the aquarium.

References

Other websites
 E.L. Konigsburg at Houghton Mifflin Eduplace website

1967 books
American children's books
Newbery Medal winning books