Interview given by the General Director of the State Hermitage to the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta

Does Russia have privately-owned museums with a public profile to rival the Hermitage or the Tretyakov Gallery?
Mikhail Piotrovsky: Of course. I came here to meet you from an exhibition in one of the best private museums in Russia – the Takashi Murakami exhibition at the Garage. The Hermitage collaborates with the Garage, for example, on the Inclusion Programme – working with artists with special abilities. The Garage is operating a very interesting project in the New Holland culture, leisure and education centre in St Petersburg. And, looking at their experience, we are creating such a museum forum in the General Staff building of the Hermitage.
The remarkable private Fabergé Museums is the third most popular in the country with tourists according to the latest ratings! (The Hermitage is first, the Tretyakov Gallery second). It is a superb example of the creation of a private collection, of bringing things back to Russia, and of the restoration of the Shuvalov Palace. We also collaborate actively with the Fabergé. One of our staff was recently a curator of an exhibition there. I am, incidentally, on the board of trustees of both the Garage and the Fabergé Museum.
In Moscow there is the splendid Museum of the Russian Icon, the remarkable Museum of Russian Impressionism and the Museum of Russian Realist Art.
Do you consider them to be on a par with you professionally?
Mikhail Piotrovsky: There are various degrees of professionalism, but therein lies their character and charm: they always reflect the taste of their collector. And so they should. Their charm, in contrast to the austere, academic classical museums, is precisely in the way that they can present Gerasimov as an Impressionist. They are not obliged to be absolutely exact. But, while understanding that a private museum is a great achievement and that it needs to be preserved, we at the same time did not, for example, accept the Garage as a member of the Union of Museums of Russia for two years. The thing is that a museum, as we understand it, is an institution that has its own stocks. If it does not, then it is a gallery. The Garage actually does have stocks and when everything was properly formalized, we did accept it into the Union of Museums.
And we do accept and will continue to accept other private museums into our Union, providing they have stocks and they are registered. Although we always thoroughly discuss the “candidates”.
In Plyos, by the way, the idea of creating the category “private museum of federal significance” +, which was a bit comic….
Aren’t you afraid of fierce competition on their part?
Mikhail Piotrovsky: No. Right now, a single museum sphere is being created in the country, within which there are three types of museum – state, private and public. They compete, without taking away from one another. It is beneficial competition. Both we and the private museums have a common rival and opponent.
Who’s that?
Mikhail Piotrovsky: Those who are opposed to us have written the word “leisure” on their banner. And they picture museum culture exclusively in that key. Such views, though, threaten the destruction of museums’ research activities and the possible appropriation of part of the museum fund to the benefit of all manner of interests (as was demonstrated very well during the sell-off of museum items in the 1920s and ’30s).
And here we are again, having to declare that we perform a great mission – we preserve the cultural and historical heritage of the nation and are not at all providers of services; that since we managed at the cost of great efforts – ranging from heroism to cunning – to preserve the country’s museum stocks in the 1990s in conditions that threatened its ruination, we have the right today to reckon on the inviolability of our collections; that museums should enjoy autonomy in taking important cultural decisions; that the money they earn should not be taken away to the benefit of the state through the automatic reduction of budgetary subsidies.
Those principles, which would appear to be self-evident, have to be repeated because now, due to the sharp increase in bureaucracy, they are beginning to assess the work of museums with overly simple yardsticks – arithmetic calculation of the services provided.
When I spoke about that at the presidential council, the President’s comment was “Of course a museum is not a service, but it’s convenient to reckon it that way.” Reckon however you please, but when the reckoning becomes the essence – that’s dangerous.
The time has come to define exactly what a museum is and what its place in society is. (And a private museum too, incidentally.)
In Plyos, by the way, at the Ministry of Culture board meeting, we rejected the concept for the development of museums drawn up by an outside body, because, like the majority of “outside concepts”, it displayed a complete failure to understand what a museum is within society and what the elimination of a museum’s autonomy and the threat to the museums’ stocks can lead to. We do indeed need a concept for the development of the museum sphere, only a different one. First and foremost, one that distinguishes museums from leisure establishments and the service sector. We cannot turn into a purely leisure facility, because our mission is to preserve and study everything that we have received from previous generations and to pass it on to those that follow. That is the main thing, and not entertainment.
The educational aspect of a museum is no less significant than the leisure one. I won’t even speak about art as therapy.
And in this situation it’s important for us to have private museums that carefully preserve their own peculiarities and freedom of development. Incidentally, the largest private museum in the world is the Metropolitan. It is also worthwhile to look at it, especially the system of relations it has built between the museum and the city.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of private museums?
Mikhail Piotrovsky: Private museums usually have substantial monetary resources and can use them more freely. State museums do not have that, because they administer state property. At the same time, though, state property is exempt from a number of aggravations that usually dog private property. We have tax concessions and financial support from the state. Private museums dream of being completely on a par with state ones with regard to concessions and exemptions, sometimes without realizing that such concessions immediately bring with them the terrible burden of being monitored. Because in exchange for its help, the state demands that collections are recorded as part of the museum fund and immediately they come in for fairly strict monitoring that may hamper a free private museum. So, on that score there should be some sort of compromise. There needs to be a proper understanding of which museum concessions should be extended to private museums. Not all of them, that’s clear.
While being absolutely fully-fledged players, private museums at the same time retain some liberties that we state museums don’t have. And they already receive some privileges. Now they are being discussed, for example, in connection with the “law on import and export”. It lays down some very good measures that will make the import of cultural valuables easier for both private and state museums. But export restrictions are not defined sufficiently well. And even state museums that are taking things back and forth all the time are objecting that there are not enough restrictions. On the other hand, there are too many freedoms, which, as we see it, may make it easier to export not temporary exhibitions but the cultural treasures themselves.
Private museums do not need agreements on the immunity of their paintings from arrest because of legal actions. At the moment, we have that problem with the USA and there are hardly any exhibitions there., while no-one can pounce on private museums with secondary law suits. It’s easier for American private museums to bring exhibitions here, too, because they are not restricted by moral pressure from the State Department.
That’s why now our task, together with the private museums, is to work out on a legislative level the rules of the game of interests, private and state. So that the museum sphere, while remaining undivided, can become more varied.
In a private museum it’s easy to do things that in the Hermitage immediately evoke hysterics from “activists” of various sorts. When it’s done on the part of a private museum, then it’s a case of “there’s no harm in it”.
The Garage is now translating and publishing an amazing collection of books on art studies from around the world, bringing out hundreds of books on art each year. No state museum can permit itself such an active publishing policy, unless perhaps the “right” sponsor comes along.
The exchange of curators makes it possible to support the cultural level of private museums. We in the Hermitage do not object to our curators working with other museums, including private ones.
The businessman Oleg Zharov has opened ten museums in the village of Viastkoye near Yaroslavl…
Mikhail Piotrovsky: At the presidential council on culture we insisted he should be given a state decoration. That, incidentally, is a high-level acknowledgement – from both professionals and the state –towards the private museum. There is a place for the museum village of Viatskoye as well in the Union of Museums.
The Russian provinces are experiencing a boom in private museums. In that same Yaroslavl religion, following the example of Viatskoye, pensioners in another village have created more than ten museums. When a museum appears in a village it firstly acquires a face, and secondly, by playing the tourist card, gives itself a new economic fate.
Mikhail Piotrovsky: That’s absolutely the right way to go, to create small original museums in villages and small towns. All municipal museums should be original and reflect the peculiarities of their location. And for that a private, unbureaucratized, initiative is just the thing.
As for tourism, though, we shouldn’t forget that tourists are not the main target audience for museums. Most important are children, students, keen art-lovers and pensioners. In general, those that we give concessions to.
We have at last thought again and realized that a museum’s visitor numbers should not be the criterion of its success. And a formula for visitor levels needs to be worked out on the basis of common sense and expert calculations (including fire safety), which, by the way, usually coincide with the museum’s own. Now the time has come for many museums to restrict visitor numbers. And where they do need to be increased, people should nonetheless keep in mind that tourists are not the primary target.
Of course, it is important when tourists, while bringing money into the museum, come into contact with high art and are educated, but when tourism turns into an absurd mechanism… The money, the temptations that come with it, the ministerial regulations on the amount of money to be earned from tourists… A museum may bring in money, but it should not be forced to make money. Everyone should bear that in mind – private museums too, whose creators, I know, are also tempted to get carried away with that.
You need to earn money, but not from the actual process of showing, from something extra. It is very important, incidentally, that many private museums remain free of charge. They can permit themselves that. Not only in America, but with us too.
Although that should not become an obsession either. I heard that Father John of Kronstadt said that a priest should charge for all religious rites, even a very poor old woman. Otherwise she might consider that they are not a serious matter as they do not cost anything. That’s roughly the case with museums too.
The Hermitage is among the five best museums in the world and, looking at the ratings, I often see that museums that don’t charge have very expensive ticket for, say, entry to the museum without queuing. Immediate entry with a guided tour costs twice as much in the Metropolitan Museum as in the Hermitage.
Is there anything you are fighting against together with private museums?
Mikhail Piotrovsky: Constantly – against the excessive unification of museums. Because each of them has its own peculiarities and it’s no good to make a museum on the principle of “like everyone else”. Unification is needed by those who are leading things towards the creation of a single common repository. We are already hearing, and, I fear, we will be hearing ever more loudly, talk along the lines of “Hey, you’ve got five identical sabres in your stocks. Why do you need them? We’ll leave one, and ‘dispose’ of the rest. There are other museums, there are collectors, when all’s said and done.” So far it seems amusing, but, one after another, various resolutions will come along that will make such statements anything but funny. For example, the latest resolution on the transfer to permanent use, or the new law on the social commission that we are now fighting against
Unification is now the most frightening thing that is threatening us in general and not just in museum culture. Dividing things into black and white has become so popular that we forget that everything is complex. And that is why we should make particular efforts to ensure that some museums are dissimilar to others.
We are living in the 21st century, where all the highest probabilities are described by people in the humanities and not by the simple arithmetic calculations of technocrats and bureaucrats. I hope that private museums will help us recognize that.
We should never forget that the Tretyakov Gallery began as a private museum, while behind the Shchukin and Morozov collections we can always see the figures of their creators, holding us back still today from foolish plans to unite or relocate those collections.
Even with us, in the State Hermitage, there are figures standing behind the collections – Catherine the Great, Nicholas I. That is how traditions and tastes are preserved. And service to society “in the Tretyakov mould” still continues. Today too the creators of private museums by art works in the West, bring them to Russia and make private museums. The Fabergé Museum, for example, does not contain a single item bought in Russia. That is also a mission that it is often awkward for the state to perform. But a private museum can by all means.
https://rg.ru/2017/10/01/mihail-piotrovskij-chastnye-muzei-meniaiut-kulturnyj-landshaft-rossii.html