A Colonnade connecting the Wachenheim Gallery with the much larger Gottesman Hall served as a transition space between the hermetic, insular, constricting world of Muscovite society and that of the open, curious, and adaptive Russian Empire of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Reproductions of maps produced in medieval Muscovy, contrasting with contemporary European works, invited comparison and helped convey visitors between the two exhibition galleries.

The broader sense of Russia Engages the World became apparent to the visitor upon entering Gottesman Hall, with its high ceilings suggestive of the vistas, distances, and vastness of the global world of which Russia had become a part, and specifically of the modern city of St. Petersburg, conceived by Peter the Great as his "window on Europe." To emphasize this sense of openness and the transparent, porous quality of world cultural interaction of the early modern age, interior, freestanding walls were kept to a minimum.