Washington Prepares Program of Events Dedicated to St. Petersburg's 300th Anniversary

Washington has prepared a program of cultural events dedicated to the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, officials from the Mayor's Office, museums and theaters of the US capital have announced at a press conference.

Russian Ambassador to the USA Yury Ushakov, who attended the press conference, said Washington took a keen interest in the anniversary of Russia's Northern Capital, which had become common property of the whole world. "The spirit of St. Petersburg overcomes all boundaries and brings peoples closer together," he stressed.

On her part, Dorothy McSweeney of Washington's Art Commission said that although many cities of the USA were going to celebrate St. Petersburg's anniversary, only Washington would celebrate the event during a whole year. According to her, that fact reflected the attention the authorities and the capital's public paid to the anniversary.

The idea to work out a program of festive events came from Hillwood, a museum that possesses the world's largest collection of Russian fine and decorative arts /excluding Russian museums/.

The program envisages a number of lectures, symposiums, concerts, movie screening, and the appearance of Russian performers and cultural workers, including the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra headed by the world-famed Valery Gergiyev, singer Olga Borodina, Boris Eifman's ballet troupe, ballet troupes from the Bolshoi and Mariinsky Theaters, pianists Alexander Gindin and Yevgeny Kisin, writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya, and others.