Ernst W. Veen, Director of the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam

Does the opening of the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam, announced for 2009 as part of "Holland Art Cities", illustrate this famous Dutch spirit?

Ernst W. Veen - The Dutch are a people of merchants and navigators who have always been attracted to other lands. The opening of a branch of the Hermitage in Amsterdam reflects this interest in foreign lands. It is also the fruit of long-standing relations between the Netherlands and Russia. The basis of the Hermitage in St Petersburg is a collection of Dutch painters from the Golden Age. And in June we will be hosting a major exhibition on the court of the Tsars, with paintings, crockery and ceremonial dresses.... It's an exchange, a curiosity about other places.

How did the idea of a 'branch' in Amsterdam come about?

E. W. V. - As director of another museum, the Niewe Kerk, I organise exhibitions of foreign art every year: Turkey, Morocco, Mexico, Afghanistan... After Perestroika, my team and I went to Russia and proposed a collaboration. Then we found an old seventeenth-century hospice that we're renovating as a museum.

How would you define the Dutch spirit?

E. W. V. - I would say that the Dutch are open to inspiration from other cultures. One example: following negotiations with the Hermitage, we set up the Association of Friends of the Hermitage and immediately raised enough money to put a new roof on the Rembrandt Hall. I also think that determination and willpower are part of our way of life.