Interview given by Mikhail Piotrovsky to m24.ru, a Moscow online media

 – Construction of the Hermitage Centre in Moscow is great news for everyone. First and foremost, it means that the Hermitage is constantly developing, growing and expanding its borders. The project will be implemented within the framework of the Greater Hermitage programme. Please, tell us more about it.

– The Greater Hermitage programme is a programme of our development, and the Moscow project forms part of it indeed. Greater Hermitage is like Greater Moscow, Greater Paris, Greater Tokyo, i.e. the centre and its surroundings. Forming concentric circles around the Hermitage on the Palace Square, it is a scheme of dynamic activity expansion aimed at making all the collections available to scholars and visitors to museums, restoring the exhibits in need for restoration and displaying them to the public to the maximum extent. Moreover, the scheme actually has to be dynamic, because the expansion principle itself has already proven worldwide to be ineffective: for example, people just do not get to look at some exhibition rooms when there’s plenty. It requires enormous costs, which are not paid by the amount of visitors. Thus, when museums grow too large, they become empty. Exhibition halls of the Small Hermitage have now joined the exhibition halls of the Winter Palace and the General Staff Building. The Palace Square becomes a part of the ensemble, the output area, but we are not going to cover it with a dome, of course. It brings us back to the concentric circles, the first of which is formed by our branches in St. Petersburg: the Menshikov Palace, the Imperial Porcelain Factory, the Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Centre. The latter is our innovation project, where we present our funds requiring a special principle of exhibiting, because both restored and unrestored items are displayed there together. Our restoration workshops are located there as well. The next circle is formed by the relationships between the Hermitage and the world, i.e. exhibitions and centres, which we call satellites. The Guggenheim Museum started to develop this model, but it should be noted that, for example, the Guggenheim in Venice could not take out their works, so they mainly conducted research and consulted other branches.

Thus, a satellite is launched into orbit, and then it can change its content and purpose, as it can be aimed at exhibitions or research. For instance, “The Hermitage. Italy”, our Venetian satellite, does not have any exhibition facilities. Its mission is to organize exhibitions in Italy or bring them to Russia and, most importantly, to publish catalogues of Italian art present at the Hermitage. On the other hand, the Amsterdam Exhibition Centre is larger and is engaged in exhibition activities to a greater extent. We had a centre in Las Vegas, and its task was to educate Las Vegas in terms of art together with the Guggenheim. We have done it, thus, the function of the centre is completed. Now everybody holds exhibitions in Las Vegas and this is no surprise, therefore, there is no sense to make the efforts that we have made. So we closed it and I believe that we have accomplished our mission.

We have been discussing the project “Guggenheim-Hermitage in Vilnius”, and a very expensive project “The Hermitage in London” has been working successfully for 7 years. The money for its funding was collected in the UK, because the principle of all these satellites is that the host country must guarantee the project maintenance for 5 years. Thus, the project is working in Amsterdam, Kazan and it will work in Omsk, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok. It is very important because if local authorities take the project seriously, it is perceived as a part of the cultural life of the city.

We are guided by the following principle: there is St. Petersburg, and everything else - like London and Kazan - are the same degree of foreign, and we bring not just items, but our interpretation of history, our story about the Impressionists, our story about Catherine II, our story about the Spanish art, because it’s the museum employees who shall interpret all that.

The next circle is formed by the media and e-clouds: websites, magazines, newspapers. This too is the Greater Hermitage. In order to implement it, we need a niche, where the Hermitage would not disturb and would be needed. We have planned projects with the Guggenheim many times, such as in Singapore and Sao Paolo. Yet, everywhere we stumbled upon one issue: the project needs to be paid. The following misunderstanding arises: why the money intended for culture shall go to some strangers. This is an important argument and I realize it, but it has repeatedly ruined our projects. Therefore, we act more cautiously: together with Ernst Wein, Head of the Dutch Society of Friends of the Hermitage, we’ve been holding press conferences for three years explaining to all museum workers why it is necessary, why it should be in Amsterdam, that it would be a museum of the second day of tourist stay and that we would not compete in any form with the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk Museum or the Van Gogh Museum. We have found an amazing niche. The same is now made in Kazan, as the Hermitage Kazan Centre is located in the Kremlin, and interacts with other museums without creating any conflict.

In any case, nothing happens quickly: it is necessary to build and prepare the entire work system, from public opinion to all financial schemes. In this sense, Moscow wasn’t featured in our plans earlier, because there was no special niche for us. Its cultural life is so rich. There is no niche for us in Paris either, yet Barcelona is ready to welcome us, and now we are negotiating on the creation of the Hermitage centre there.

The system of satellites is flexible and developing, and now we have an opportunity to launch a satellite into the Moscow orbit. A lot of issues are still to be resolved: architects are working, our fellow museum colleagues are developing a concept, a mission and a development strategy for the former ZIL territory – a place that is both close to the city centre and, at the same time, somewhat removed from it, and that is in need for a new cultural institution.

We have decided that is would be a centre of new modern art of the XX and XXI century forming part of the Hermitage XX-XXI project, which will host large exhibitions of different kinds of modern art in the Hermitage style. It is aimed at demonstrating that there’s no new art, everything is a continuation of the same artistic tradition.

– You did a lot of projects with the Guggenheim Museum. Have you considered the idea of working with the Bilbao effect? That is, to do projects in Omsk and Vladivostok rather not of a local value but of the global one? Or take some insignificant little town and turn it into a global cultural centre.

– It requires money; it’s as simple as that. Kulturtrager activities always have economic reasons. Bilbao is not a little town; it’s the capital of the Basque Country and the largest industrial centre of shipbuilding. And it’s been dying some time ago, just as St. Petersburg. I wouldn’t call it the Bilbao effect, as it’s the effect of the Basque Government. The government allocated fantastic amounts of money and bought the Guggenheim and Tom Krens. There must be a strong in-situ desire to change something or to assert oneself and Bilbao had it, so it worked out. They had the money for it as well, because they ensured that all taxes stayed in the Basque Country not going to the state treasury. For the same reason it did not work for the Guggenheim in other places: they just ran out of money. This is why we closed the facility in London. Alexander Litvinenko was killed, the political situation changed and the desire of Londoners to sponsor the exhibitions from Russia gradually weakened. But in fact, the centre which will appear in Vladivostok will become a cultural centre for Korea, China and Japan. 

– You have said that a niche opened in Moscow. But this niche is not limited to ZIL, that is, it is not only a special niche, but also a cultural one, right? Why has it appeared now?

– Of course, this is due to ZIL: there was a territory in need for cultural institution. The Hermitage was attracted on a business initiative because it would create a certain effect. At the same time, our experience has shown that we feel limited in St. Petersburg in terms of modern art: Manifesta and the exhibition of Francis Bacon were special, exceptional projects that could have been shown in Moscow. Would we have a centre, we would have certainly brought the exhibition of Francis Bacon. It didn’t work out with displaying the exhibition at the Pushkin Museum, because our partners had to conduct protracted negotiations and the project was postponed. Moscow may also experience new aspects of modern art, because it lacks exactly the things we do.

– The Garage opened in Moscow two months ago. Being a museum of modern art without a permanent collection, it is more a gallery than a museum. Do you think that the Hermitage, once opened, will compete with the Garage?

– We are certainly going to discuss our policy with the Garage. It is noteworthy that the Garage is not quite a gallery, rather a Kunsthalle. Rem Koolhaas has also constructed us a Kunsthalle in the former stables of the Hermitage. It is a large exhibition hall with a separate entrance, and it is assumed that there we will carry out a separate exhibition programme not always directly linked to the Hermitage. The Garage can also be turned into a museum, because it has private collections, which may be moved there at any moment. The fundamental difference between us is that our projects would be built on a combination of modern and classical art.

 
As part of 2015 Venice Biennale, we did an exhibition GlassTress, and hopefully it will arrive here in December. It is an exhibition about glass, relatively speaking, about the Gothic tradition in the glass art. It combines the authentic items of Gothic art and the items made by modern artists especially for this exhibition. We are planning to do such projects transmitting the Hermitage style, yet focused on the present, in Moscow. Therefore, there is enough room for everyone.

– Not all museums are working on the ratio of old and new art. Marvellous projects are made in the European museums, in Versailles and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Are the Russian viewers ready to perceive modern art in a classic space?

– There are more such viewers than those willing to accept purely modern art. There are two fundamentally different ways of its representation. The museum of modern art sees it as a completely different language needed to be shown separately. It is a fundamental point. We proceed from the assumption that there is nothing new. I daresay that in this context the viewer perceives it easier, it turns out that this method is more effective. But when we, for example, held the Manifesta in two buildings - the Winter Palace and the General Staff Building - there were those who expressed an explicit dislike. But it must be said that such a dislike was mostly expressed by the Hermitage custodians and a part of the staff.

Not many people here are interested in modern art. The Chapman Brothers exhibition was in this sense a pure experiment. A separate entrance, a separate ticket, a separate exhibition in the General Staff Building and a super scandal, “everything is going to be closed”, that is, everything needed in terms of the media effect was done resulting in 15 thousand visitors. This is the number of people interested in a super exhibition of modern art. Not much, but the numbers grew at Manifesta resulting in a million of visitors.

Therewith, there were people who spoke about the exhibition of Bacon in the following way: “Well, now we can see clearly that this Bacon is shit with Velasquez hanging by his side”. In the end, this is also a method of involvement of people in the discussion, a way to attract more audience to those who are automatically interested in modern art. People do not necessarily have to like everything, but we have to make it interesting. Modern art tries to entertain the audience with scandals and we give it a more serious approach based on the opposition. Because, after all, when the visitors see a work of Richter hanging in the Apollo Hall of the Hermitage, they begin to think: “Once the Hermitage did it, then it’s good and should be considered”.

– Because the Hermitage is a brand.

– Yes, in the debate whether it is art or not, we say, “once we’ve exhibited it, then it’s art.”

– You’ve engaged Hani Rashid for the Moscow project; you are holding an exhibition of works of Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas builds the Garage in Moscow. It is good that there is an opportunity to work with the world-renowned architects.

– Rem Koolhaas is our court architect. Together we made a huge study “Hermitage 2014.” Today, we are developing on the basis of this study. In addition to the Kunsthalle, Rem performed the Public Library project at the Staraya Derevnya Centre. Therefore, Rem is our old friend.

– Nevertheless, you invited Hani Rashid to work on the Moscow project. Why him?

– I’ve known Hani for quite a while too. He did the “Virtual Guggenheim” and we have talked multiple times about the way the museum architecture could be. He moved professionally from a museum to architecture becoming an independent architect after much experience with the Guggenheim and Frank Gehry. Thus, he formed a particularly interesting approach. Once we sat for 5 hours at the airport in Venice and talked a lot. He recalls it all the time. So in this case, he is our man and the developers approved him. His idea is to grow the museum from the museum ideas and from the museum environment.

You say, “There is an opportunity to work with world-renowned architects.” We do not allow these architects to work. Not the authorities, but us. We do not understand their work principles. The builders do not understand. Therefore, by the way, the project of Dominique Perrault with the Mariinsky Theatre was cut. Many Rem’s projects failed to take place in Russia as our country is insanely difficult to work in.

Now we are trying to work out a recipe of collaboration and we are starting to succeed. It has turned out better than it turned out by Corbusier. When we did the General Staff Building, the World Bank tender was won by the Russian Architects of Nikita Yavein’s Studio 44. Rem participated in the tender, but lost. I asked him to create an alternative project that we put together with the draft of Yavein and discussed it in with the architects. It was clear that the building would be designed in accordance with the winning project, but Rem’s ideas eventually had an impact on it and we got what we wanted.

– New York Times website published a layout of the Moscow project.

– Yes, they did it first and it is completely unacceptable. Yet, Hani has the copyright and he disposes of it.

– But this means that there is already an architectural and structural concept of the project.

– Indeed, but there are many details that will work later during the implementation process. The project is based on a combination of public spaces for different categories of art, mobility of well-stacked containers, openness to the outer world, different duration and many technological nuances. The dynamically connected containers have their own charm in a kind of individual isolation. The project has a lot of architectural merits lacking an exceptional idea, a twist, which it yet to come as well as the latest technology. It is important that Hani’s architecture may vary like a living organism. One of the tasks was to be prepared for the things that are impossible to be implemented in these buildings.

– In any case, we can assume that the Hermitage will become a space forming unit which will begin to develop additional institutions, cultural districts and layers. Have you already come up with any ideas?

– We are planning a whole quarter indeed, including construction of a tower also designed by Hani Rashid. And I have to mention that he works there in collaboration with Sergei Choban who is an absolutely suiting Russian partner. A concert hall is also planned, but no architect has been chosen for the project yet. It will be a quarter of cultural institutions. We will see what will become dominant. Probably us, but then again someone may suddenly build a crazy concert hall. With regard to educational projects, there are planned workshops, a large internal lecture hall and a lecture hall overlooking the street.

– Do you consider working with Moscow artists at the Moscow facility?

– We will certainly exhibit St. Petersburg artists, because they need this space. However, we will be certainly working with everybody. We are quite neutral, and our curators don’t have any special preferences so far.
 
We don’t have many opportunities to exhibit Russian artists in St. Petersburg, as we work with world names to a greater extent. The Hermitage in Moscow will be more open. There will be no restrictions imposed by a historic building and the neighbourhood of the Russian Museum, which has a monopoly on such exhibitions. Yet, they sometimes exhibit Western art, for example, the works of Georg Baselitz, although this is our sphere.

– But Ilya Kabakov is now exhibited in the General Staff Building.

–    The “Red Wagon” had been put there before the building reconstruction even finished. We held his exhibition being the first upon the return of Mr. Kabakov to Russia. You could say that he returned through the Hermitage. Ilya Kabakov is a world-renowned artist.

– Do you make exhibitions of the Russian architects working with you?

– We held an exhibition of architectural drawings from the collection of Sergei Choban. He has a wonderful collection and he has built a lot in St. Petersburg. In everything that we display, we try to find some special aspect related to the aesthetics of the Hermitage. We always have an answer to the question why it is at the Hermitage and not somewhere else.

– Is it possible today to talk about some national features of museums’ activities under the conditions of super globalization? Maybe every museum is an independent brand with unique, not national identity.

– I think there are two features. Firstly, I’d take into consideration characteristics of a museum itself, because every museum is a unique body. While many museums are alike, it is important for old and ancient museums to maintain their traditional features. With regard to the national features, than, for example, the British Museum is the British Museum and a part of the British history at the same time. The same thing is with the Louvre and the Hermitage. That is, there is the Hermitage as a museum of world art, but, at the same time, the Hermitage is the great product of Russian culture indicating what the Russians collected and how they did it.

In order to preserve the unity of the all-Russian museum space, the Union of Museums was created. But we must understand that the national features are born in the attempt to maintain the originality and individuality of a single museum. Levelling is very dangerous, but this trend exists in Russia.

– Since we are talking about national cultural and museum features, I’d like to ask you about Chersonesos (ed .: on 30 July, Sergei Khalyuta, Dean Archpriest of the Sevastopol District of the Russian Orthodox Church, was appointed to the position of the director of the Chersonesos Museum-Preserve). Now, one of the largest archaeological complexes in Russia is in a difficult situation, bureaucratically difficult, first of all. You made a statement about the critical importance of preserving the monument of not even national, but global and cultural significance. What changes would this appointment bring if Mr. Khalyuta would not have resigned?

– Prince Vladimir was baptized in Chersonesos, because it was the most historic multi-layered cultural centre: it represented antiquity, the Byzantine Empire and the Middle Ages and, all together, this is our great historical and cultural pride. Thus, the events going on now lead to a violation of this paradigm, which worked well since the days of Nicholas I. Monastery and fleet lands were taken for excavations because it is the Russian Pompeii. The preserve and the monument with constant excavations are most important representing the ancient Russian culture worldwide and the church takes a secondary place. The sanctity comes from the work of archaeologists and scientists. Thus, it is wrong to appoint a cathedral dean there. His interests do not coincide with the public interests. Three months ago, there was an attempt to combine Chersonesos with different tourist attractions and Sevastopol. It is also wrong, because it is not a tourist facility either. The complex shall be headed by a museum worker, as it has been all the time. It was a place where the conflict between the Church and the museum, in principle, was resolved. Yet, now this balance is being violated by some arbitrary decision. We don’t need a new trouble spot: without adding this, we’ve got a thousand problems that need to be solved somehow.