The Hermitage Museum management has presented the labeling system recently introduced in the museum.

      Now the Hermitage exhibits will be marked with colorless markers and pencils, as well as special fog. It will be applied to those exhibits, which cannot be touched.

      Now there are six different types of labeling: for paper, glass, porcelain, canvas, wood and ceramics. They make it possible to recognize every tagged item, as well as help identify it in case it is burned, for example, since the label remains even in ashes. The chemicals that make up the label cannot harm artworks. The tags will be recognizable for 50 years since their application. However, a method for putting such labels on metal items is yet to be developed.

      The Hermitage earlier announced that it would develop its own method of labeling exhibits. The work was started after disclosing a grand larceny from its collection in 2006. The museum curator Larissa Zavadskaya turned out to be involved in it.