Don't Touch!

Art is meant to be looked at. The higher the art, the stricter the surveillance. The fact that visitors breathe and thereby blow moisture into the museum halls is already detrimental, but touching the art works with your hands can acidify them. This explains the signs all over the Hermitage: "Do not touch." This museum collection has gone through enough as it is: eager hordes barged in during the biggest revolution of the 20 century. A few decades later, all transportable old masters were evacuated to Siberia by train and brought back again when the coast was clear. Now, this former palace of the tsars can breathe easily... But the museum makes an exception for a group of children. Using their fingertips, they celebrate a "touching" feel-for-all.