The State Hermitage Museum (Russian: Госуда́рственный Эрмита́ж , "Gosudárstvennyj Ermitáž"; ] ) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
 The largest in the world, it was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired an impressive 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.
Kynaston McShine (born 1935) is a Trinidad and Tobago-born museum curator.
 In 1966, as curator at the Jewish Museum, he organized the first museum survey of minimalist art, Primary Structures.
 At the Museum of Modern Art, where he became associate curator in 1968, he initiated the innovative Projects series and has organized some of the museum’s most important exhibitions, including the early survey of conceptual art, Information (1970); exhibitions of Marcel Duchamp (1973), Joseph Cornell (1980), and Andy Warhol (1989); The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect (1999); Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul (2006); Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years (2007).
 He has held positions in the MOMA's Department of Painting and Sculpture as Associate Curator, 1968–71; Curator of Exhibitions, 1971–84; Senior Curator, 1984–2001; Acting Chief Curator 2001-03 and Chief Curator at Large, 2003-2008.
 In 2003, McShine was the recipient of the CCS Bard for curatorial excellence.
The Hermitage Volunteer Service of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia is an organisation of volunteers that assist with the running of this world-renowned museum.
 The program aids the Hermitage with its external and internal activities and functions as an informal link between the museum staff and the public, making the knowledge of the museum’s experts accessible to the general community.
 Volunteers also develop projects reflecting their own personal goals and interests in connection with the museum.
The Nevsky Pickwickians was an informal circle of art-loving and intellectual friends who were students at the University of St. Petersburg, Russia at the end of the 19th century.
 The group originally included Alexandre Benois (effectively its leader), Léon Bakst, Walter Nouvel, Dmitry Filosofov and Konstantin Somov.
John B. Ravenal (born August 1, 1959 in Providence, Rhode Island) is an art historian, writer, and museum curator.
 Before 1998, he was the Associate Curator of 20th-Century Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
 From 1998 to 2015 he was curator of contemporary art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, where he organized exhibitions of Ryan McGinness: "Studio Visit" (2014); Xu Bing: "Tobacco Project"(2011), and Sally Mann: "The Flesh and The Spirit" (2010).
 He was curator of the VMFA's Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch exhibition, "Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Love, Loss, and the Cycle of Life".
 His lecture about the exhibition took place in the Leslie Cheek Theater in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
 The show opened in November 2016 in partnership with the Munch Museum in Oslo.
 He is the author of the exhibition catalogue "Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Inspiration and Transformation."
Cornelia H. "Connie" Butler (born 1 February 1963) is an American museum curator.
 She is currently Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
 From 2006-2013, she served as the Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art (New York City).
 Prior to that, she was a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) from 1996-2005.
 Butler also held curatorial positions at the Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, New York), Artists Space (New York City), and the Des Moines Arts Center (Iowa).
 Her multimedia exhibition "WACK!
 Art and the Feminist Revolution" dealt with international feminist art of the 1970s.
 Butler is a 1980 graduate of Marlborough School, and a 1984 graduate of Scripps College.
The Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings in 1930 and 1931 resulted in the departure of some of the most valuable paintings from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to Western museums.
 Several of the paintings had been in the Hermitage Collection since its creation by Empress Catherine the Great.
 About 250 paintings were sold, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, and other important artists.
 Andrew Mellon donated the twenty-one paintings he purchased from the Hermitage to the United States government in 1937, which became the nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum was a museum owned and operated by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
 It was located in The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
 It was designed by architect Rem Koolhaas and opened on October 7, 2001.
 It added three more collections and exhibits subsequent to its opening.
 It was the result of a collaboration agreement between the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and its exhibitions featured works held by both institutions.
Konstantin Andreyevich Somov (Russian: Константин Андреевич Сомов, November 30, 1869 – May 6, 1939) was a Russian artist associated with the "Mir iskusstva".
 Born into a family of a major art historian and Hermitage Museum curator Andrey Ivanovich Somov, he became interested in 18th-century art and music at an early age.
Crouching Boy is a sculpture of the great Renaissance Italian painter and sculptor Michelangelo, preserved today at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, it is the only work by Michelangelo in the Hermitage Museum.

Question: What century was Konstantin Somov born into a family of a Hermitage Museum curator?
Answer: 18th-century