«Tour de France 1717 – The Grand Journey of Peter the Great»
On February 19, 2017 in the Winter Palace of Peter the Great as part of the large educational program «1717», the Volunteer Service has held the grand opening of the next children’s computer graphics and animation competition: «Tour De France 1717 – the Grand Journey of Peter the Great». The project is dedicated to the 300th anniversary of Peter I’s travels abroad in 1717 and was prepared in conjunction with the School Centre, the Russian History and Culture Department and the Department of Western European Applied Arts.
Contest participants are offered topics related to significant events of the early 18th century from European and Russian history as well as numerous reforms and transformations of Peter’s time and the influence of European art on the development of Russian culture. A number of the topics are connected with the history and construction of St. Petersburg.
A large-scale educational program was organized for the participants of the competition. Thanks to the staff of the Department of the History of Russian Culture: N.I. Tarasova and S.A. Nilov, the children got to know the history of the Winter Palace, the traditions of 18th century European fashion, saw dolls in costumes of this era and learned about the preserved wardrobe of Peter I. Guests of the program were happy to take part in gaming sessions devoted to the first textbook of etiquette in Russia «Mirror of Youth» published in 1717.
The dolls in the event were decorated in historical costumes of the 18th century: Peter I, Louis XIV, actors of the King Sun Theatre were dressed in decorative costumes. They were carefully created according to sources on the history of fashion by Anna Ernestovna Zhabreva, a member of the Academy of Sciences. An elegant red-haired lady in a dress with a «Watteau dress» performed by Olga Y. Atamanova – head of the circle for puppetry, opened the «School Centre» of the Hermitage in 2016.
The event ended with excursions through the halls of the Winter Palace. As a special surprise for children, the curators of the exposition introduced a unique musical mechanism of English watches originally belonging to Peter I.
The competition is open to everyone between the ages of 6 and 17. The works will be accepted until April 30th, 2017, and the winners will be decided by May 13th, 2017.
Contests for schoolchildren in the field of information technology have been carried out since 2005 by the Hermitage Volunteer Service in conjunction with the Scientific and Methodical Department «School Centre» with the cooperation of the scientific departments of the Hermitage. The competition works are carried out in the form of multimedia presentations, computer graphics and animation. The work of the winners will be presented on the monitors in the halls of the museum.