The activities of State Russian Museum and Exhibition Centre ROSPHOTO, founded in 2002 by Ministry for Culture of the Russian Federation, embrace exhibitions, scientific research and educational programs. The Centre exhibits works of well known national and international masters of photography, as well as young talented artists working in the genres of contemporary art closely connected with photography: video-art, photographic installations, animation, experimental cinema. With approximately fifty exhibitions a year, many of the Centre's projects are developed in cooperation with national and foreign museums, photography organizations, cultural institutes and foundations: Goethe Institute, Mondriaan Foundation, Nordic Cultural Foundation, French Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, National Library of Russia (St.-Petersburg), Musee d'Orsay (Paris), European Institute of Restoration and Graphics (Paris), Musee de l'Elysee (Lausanne, Switzerland), to name a few. ROSPHOTO office and exhibition venues are located in Bolshaya Morskaya street downtown St.-Petersburg. The Centre is constantly expanding its cooperation network and regularly organizes exhibition tours that embrace many regional museums in Russia, from Nizhny Novgorod to Irkutsk. In 2006, ROSPHOTO joined Museums Association of Russia. Constantly expanding its collection (by now approx. ten thousand items), ROSPHOTO is currently developing a program entitled "Russian Museum of Photography" and an online resource "Russia's Photographic Heritage". Both these great endeavors require research work in the sphere of preservation and processing of digital electronic images, cataloguing, conservation and restoration of photography. In this, ROSPHOTO cooperates with various institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Komarov Botanical Institute, Laboratory for Restoration and Conservation of Documents at the Russian Academy for Sciences) and such well-known foreign research centres as Chicago Albumen Works. ROSPHOTO has been developing restoration, conservation and preservation methods and technologies that would allow effective solutions in taking care of any private collection or museum archive of photographs and negatives. The laboratory of scientific restoration at ROSPHOTO provides services on restoration and conservation of photography as well as training for young specialists. In December 2008, ROSPHOTO was entrusted the functions of a scientific and methodics centre to realize the program of preservation of photographic documents within the national holdings of the Russian Federation. ROSPHOTO is currently developing a lecture course in the history and theory of photography for higher educational establishments. For several years it has held its annual conference, "Photography in Museum". One of ROSPHOTO’s past successful educational projects is the Baltic Photography School, a non-commercial learning project that allowed many aspiring photographers to take part in workshops and seminars conducted by guest experts and photography masters, both foreign and national.