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Director: Hermitage Museum Hosts over 4.5 Million Tourists Annually

The State Hermitage Museum is seen illuminated in red for the centenary of the Bolshevik revolution in Saint Petersburg on October 25, 2017. AFP
The State Hermitage Museum is seen illuminated in red for the centenary of the Bolshevik revolution in Saint Petersburg on October 25, 2017. AFP
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Director: Hermitage Museum Hosts over 4.5 Million Tourists Annually

The State Hermitage Museum is seen illuminated in red for the centenary of the Bolshevik revolution in Saint Petersburg on October 25, 2017. AFP
The State Hermitage Museum is seen illuminated in red for the centenary of the Bolshevik revolution in Saint Petersburg on October 25, 2017. AFP

More than 4.5 million people visit the Hermitage Museum a year, confirmed the director of the museum and the Russian Orientalist Mikhail Piotrovsky during an interview with Tass agency.

He said that this huge turnout is a "big and serious problem" that faces most of the world's major museums, including Hermitage, which accommodates thousands of visitors.

Piotrovsky said that the museum's main building can host up to 7,111 visitors, and stressed the importance of maintaining safety and security procedures during the reception of ministers.

"The ability of the Hermitage to contain this number of visitors does not mean that it can welcome them at once. Instead, we must allow the entry of the number of visitors whose exit from the museum we can secure in 10 minutes, in case a fire breaks out."

The Hermitage director said that during an international conference in the Vatican, directors of international museums discussed the protection of cities and museums from tourist flows, pointing out that "the Hermitage tackled this problem 40 years ago, when the number of visitors, was like now, about 4.5 million per year."

Piotrovsky explained that such numbers require the protection of cultural facilities without affecting the work and reception of visitors. He also saw that "the problem is twofold: the first is how to protect historic buildings, and the second is how to make museums available to anyone who wants to visit," highlighting that the museums' accommodation ability is limited and that "visitors have to recognize that the museum is like the theater."

To address this problem, museum directors participating in the Vatican International Conference formulated a set of recommendations for museum managements, including practical suggestions such as designing virtual versions featuring all museum exhibits to allow people to see them before visiting the museum.

According to the Hermitage director, the conference participants are working on developing joint international evaluation standards. The Russian orientalist said there is only one rating mechanism for museums dubbed the "Notre Dame rating" and that "the Hermitage is the fourth on Notre Dame's list."

He confirmed that his museum is currently cooperating with the Erasmus University Rotterdam to set global standards to be adopted by experts in the museums rating worldwide. He explained that based on the scientific standards of those lists, the St. Petersburg's Hermitage is always among the top ten museums in the world.

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Chocolate's Future Could Hinge on Success of Growing Cocoa Not Just in The Tropics, But in The Lab

FILE PHOTO: A worker cools chocolate during a manufacturing process in Belgium, May 15, 2024. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A worker cools chocolate during a manufacturing process in Belgium, May 15, 2024. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
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Chocolate's Future Could Hinge on Success of Growing Cocoa Not Just in The Tropics, But in The Lab

FILE PHOTO: A worker cools chocolate during a manufacturing process in Belgium, May 15, 2024. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A worker cools chocolate during a manufacturing process in Belgium, May 15, 2024. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo

Climate change is stressing rainforests where the highly sensitive cocoa bean grows, but chocolate lovers need not despair, say companies that are researching other ways to grow cocoa or develop cocoa substitutes.
Scientists and entrepreneurs are working on ways to make more cocoa that stretch well beyond the tropics, from Northern California to Israel, The Associated Press said.
California Cultured, a plant cell culture company, is growing cocoa from cell cultures at a facility in West Sacramento, California, with plans to start selling its products next year. It puts cocoa bean cells in a vat with sugar water so they reproduce quickly and reach maturity in a week rather than the six to eight months a traditional harvest takes, said Alan Perlstein, the company's chief executive. The process also no longer requires as much water or arduous labor.
“We see just the demand of chocolate monstrously outstripping what is going to be available,” Perlstein said. “There's really no other way that we see that the world could significantly increase the supply of cocoa or still keep it at affordable levels without extensive either environmental degradation or some significant other cost.”
Cocoa trees grow about 20 degrees north and south of the equator in regions with warm weather and abundant rain, including West Africa and South America. Climate change is expected to dry out the land under the additional heat. So scientists, entrepreneurs and chocolate-lovers are coming up with ways to grow cocoa and make the crop more resilient and more resistant to pests — as well as craft chocolatey-tasting cocoa alternatives to meet demand.
The market for chocolate is massive with sales in the United States surpassing $25 billion in 2023, according to the National Confectioners Association. Many entrepreneurs are betting on demand growing faster than the supply of cocoa. Companies are looking at either bolstering the supply with cell-based cocoa or offering alternatives made from products ranging from oats to carob that are roasted and flavored to produce a chocolatey taste for chips or filling.
The price of cocoa soared earlier this year because of demand and troubles with the crop in West Africa due to plant disease and changes in weather. The region produces the bulk of the world’s cocoa.
“All of this contributes to a potential instability in supply, so it is attractive to these lab-grown or cocoa substitute companies to think of ways to replace that ingredient that we know of as chocolatey-flavored,” said Carla D. Martin, executive director of the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute and a lecturer in African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
The innovation is largely driven by demand for chocolate in the US and Europe, Martin said. While three-quarters of the world's cocoa is grown in West and Central Africa, only 4% is consumed there, she said.
The push to produce cocoa indoors in the US comes after other products, such as chicken meat, have already been grown in labs. It also comes as supermarket shelves fill with evolving snack options — something that developers of cocoa alternatives say shows people are ready to try what looks and tastes like a chocolate chip cookie even if the chip contains a cocoa substitute.
They said they also are hoping to tap into rising consciousness among consumers about where their food comes from and what it takes to grow it, particularly the use of child labor in the cocoa industry.
Planet A Foods in Planegg, Germany, contends the taste of mass market chocolate is derived largely from the fermentation and roasting in making it, not the cocoa bean itself. The company's founders tested out ingredients ranging from olives to seaweed and settled on a mix of oats and sunflower seeds as the best tasting chocolate alternative, said Jessica Karch, a company spokesperson. They called it “ChoViva” and it can be subbed into baked goods, she said.
“The idea is not to replace the high quality, 80% dark chocolate, but really to have a lot of different products in the mass market,” Karch said.
Yet while some are seeking to create alternative cocoa sources and substitutes, others are trying to bolster the supply of cocoa where it naturally grows. Mars, which makes M&Ms and Snickers, has a research facility at University of California, Davis aimed at making cocoa plants more resilient, said Joanna Hwu, the company's senior director of cocoa plant science. The facility hosts a living collection of cocoa trees so scientists can study what makes them disease-resistant to help farmers in producing countries and ensure a stable supply of beans.
“We see it as an opportunity, and our responsibility,” Hwu said.
In Israel, efforts to expand the supply of cocoa are also underway. Celleste Bio is taking cocoa bean cells and growing them indoors to produce cocoa powder and cocoa butter, said co-founder Hanne Volpin. In a few years, the company expects to be able to produce cocoa regardless of the impact of climate change and disease — an effort that has drawn interest from Mondelez, the maker of Cadbury chocolate.
“We only have a small field, but eventually, we will have a farm of bioreactors,” Volpin said.
That's similar to the effort under way at California Cultured, which plans to seek permission from the US Food and Drug Administration to call its product chocolate, because, according to Perlstein, that's what it is.
It might wind up being called brewery chocolate, or local chocolate, but chocolate no less, he said, because it's genetically identical though not harvested from a tree.
“We basically see that we're growing cocoa — just in a different way,” Perlstein said.