The National Museum signed on (3) agreements with the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg in the Russian Federation. The agreements were signed by Jamal bin Hassan al-Musawi, director-general of the National Museum on the Omani side, and the Russian side by Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovskiy, director-general of the Hermitage Museum and member of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum-Oman.

The first Agreement includes the establishment of a temporary exhibition entitled “Oman, The Land of Frankincense Civilization’ and will be held at the great Winter Palace. Oman`s exhibition will be next to Egyptian antiquities and supposed to be launched in June 2020. The exhibition is one year long and will include magnificent artefacts that carry out a historical, aesthetic and moral dimension of the National Museum holdings and the office of His Majesty’s Advisor to Cultural Affairs, dating from the Bronze age to the Iron age.

The National Museum is leading an initiative of establishing exhibitions in the most popular museums around the world. The initiative aimed at promoting the cultural heritage of Oman and its abounds.

The second agreement includes the inauguration of a corner bearing the name Hermitage at the National Museum-Oman, starting in October 2020. Therefore, the National Museum will exhibit (4) loaned Russian national treasures related to Islamic civilization in Russia, including pieces discovered at the Bulgarian archaeological site on the banks of the Volga River and listed in the list of UNESCO World Heritage, discoveries from the centre of Siberia and the Russian Caucasus that estimated to be from the 10th century to the 19th century AD.

While the third agreement includes indurating of a temporary exhibition at the National Museum in Muscat during October 2020 for 3 months. The exhibition highlights the magnificence of the Islamic civilization in Russia and it will exhibit 20 museum unique artefacts aged back to be from the 19th century until the beginning of the 20th century. Moreover, the objects are range from archaeological findings, jewels, traditional weapons, pottery, and some architecture models. Also, these objects are from Tatarstan, Turkmenistan and the Russian Caucasus.

These agreements are coming within a framework of a Memorandum of Understanding that was signed by the National Museum –Oman and the Hermitage Museum in 2014 and coincides with the occasion of the 255th anniversary of the Hermitage Museum.