Gates' Art Company To Digitize Hermitage

Art history will never be the same again, thanks to Bill Gates.

Corbis Corp., a small company owned by the Microsoft chairman, has signed an agreement with the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, to digitize one of the most important collections of art in the world.

It gives the company the right to photograph and digitize the stunning collection of the museum, which houses 3 million paintings, sculptures and artifacts representing nearly every period of art from the late Stone Age to contemporary times.

"There are museums that are in the absolute highest tier when it comes to the richness of their collections, and the Hermitage is one of those museums," said Doug Rowan, Corbis' president and chief executive. "It's very, very special."

Company officials, who refused to disclose the financial arrangements, said they have been working on the agreement for several months. The nonexclusive agreement comes one month after Bellevue-based Corbis purchased the Bettman Archives, one of the most respected collections of news and historical photographs.

Included in the Hermitage collection are some exceptional French impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, including dozens of French masterpieces seized by the Soviet army from Germany in the final days of World War II and hidden in the Hermitage's vaults for half a century. The long-term status of those paintings is unclear due to treaties signed with Germany in 1990 and 1992 in which the Soviets agreed to return all art taken following the war.

Earlier this year, the Hermitage held a controversial exhibition of 74 French impressionist and postimpressionist paintings seized during the war.

Rowan did not indicate if those paintings would be among those that Corbis will be digitizing, but said, "We'll have access to everything."

In recent years, the museum, built in 1764 by Catherine the Great for her personal art collection, has fallen on hard economic times. News reports two to three years ago indicated that the museum was nearly broke, that its paintings were allowed to hang without proper ventilation, and that the building itself was deteriorating.

In a statement today, Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovski said, "For the benefit of the many audiences we serve, it is essential that we apply new technologies to make our collections more accessible and to protect and preserve this material for future generations."