Atlantes and “Sergeants”

A conversation with the outstanding scholar and art historian, Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky

We agreed to meet specially to discuss a quite disturbing recent tendency: the creeping return into everyday practice of bureaucratic methods of administering cultural institutions, among them Russia’s largest museums.

Mikhail Borisovich, I would honestly be glad if I were wrong, but the things I have been hearing and reading recently prompt the thought that previous methods of assessing the work of museums and other cultural institutions are making a return to our lives from what is not the best of the Soviet past. The work of your colleagues is again being evaluated by visitor numbers, by the number of tickets sold, the term “efficiency” is being used, in addition to which museums are also expected to have an income from commercial activities. For example, some civil servants in the Ministry of Culture have noted “the fact of the inefficient work of the Pushkin Preserve in Pskov Region” and are demanding an immediate written explanation from its director, Georgy Vasilevich. It emerged that the preserve had not made sufficient additional income last year. That is what aroused the civil servants’ wrath. It follows that the Pushkin Preserve or the Hermitage needs to earn more so as to be considered efficient.

Mikhail Piotrovsky: From the viewpoint of those cultural figures that is just how things are. Plus they also take a close look at visitor numbers. Those are their criteria of efficiency.

Let’s be more precise – who are “they”?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Fortunately, we are not talking about the Minister of Culture, or even his deputies. They are, after all, knowledgeable and competent people. These are middle-ranking officials in charge of various departments and lines of work within the ministry. If you like, we are talking about the “sergeants” of culture. And, you know, in this instance the military terminology is entirely applicable. Believe me, I have been working as Director of the Hermitage for a quarter-century, but I cannot recall such a style in communicating with the heads of museums and national preserves, such a tone as in the letters that they are sending out today. They are full of army-style orders: “report within two hours”, “explain”, “accept for implementation”… As if they were commanding not museums, but a factory producing tanks. To speak in such a tone with a distinguished, outstanding director of a national preserve, as Georgy Vasilevich unarguably is, is of course unacceptable. And, to be honest, regarding competence things are far worse with out “sergeants” than with the real ones.

Are you referring to the notorious criteria for the efficiency of museums’ work?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Those too, of course. Forgive me that I have to say things that are glaringly obvious, but you cannot treat a museum or a preserve like a shopping and entertainment centre. The purpose of our existence has nothing to do with entertainment. First and foremost, we exist to preserve those treasures that are entrusted to us. To preserve and hand them on inviolate to future generations. I am referring to the masterpieces of art kept in the Hermitage and about the countryside associated with Pushkin that the preserve in Pskov Region cares for. We managed to preserve our treasures even in the most difficult days of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Now, though, under free-market conditions, the notorious “sergeants” of culture are beginning to tell us ever more persistently that gathering dust in our storerooms there are a host of works of art surplus to requirements – let’s put them up for auction, hand them over to private museums. And of course, under market conditions, the same hands are reaching out for the protected lands in the Pushkin Hills. But I repeat, our primary task, and even the essence of our function, is above all to preserve what has been passed down to us by previous generations. That is Russia’s real wealth.

Nonetheless, people should see that wealth. That’s to say, without visitors a museum is not a museum. And your bosses’ logic is impeccable at first sight: the more people that see the masterpieces in the Hermitage or the Pushkin landscapes the better. Hence the number of visitors can be a criterion for assessing the work of a museum.

Mikhail Piotrovsky: No, it can’t. Each museum, each preserve has restrictions on numbers. For example, we know that no more than 7,000 people can be in the main complex of the Hermitage at any one time. And over the year, we cannot receive more than 5 million visitors. If they begin increasing those figures regularly, then the museum will start to deteriorate. It’s the same, incidentally, with the preserve: crowds of tourists can simply trample out of existence the little Pushkin trails that have been created by remarkable specialists with a love and knowledge of the subject.

OK, let’s accept that. But can a museum’s income be a criterion of its efficiency?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: The only thing true about that is that our museums have learnt how to make money. The Hermitage, for example, earns 10–12 million dollars a year. That is a direct consequence of the inventiveness, creativity and very great competence of our staff members. However, to plan for museums to bring in additional income is unacceptable. Because, once again, you can’t go turning a museum into a cash cow. That’s not what it’s there for.

It’s curious, though, esteemed Mikhail Borisovich: you deny the ministry the right both to set visitor numbers and to plan income. But what else do the ministry officials have to do, especially under market conditions? After all, they need to teach you to be self-supporting, so that you are not dependent on the state, which is having a hard time of it already.

Mikhail Piotrovsky: That why the state and its ministries are there, so that cultural institutions don’t exist under free-market conditions. Otherwise we will very quickly teach museums to trade their priceless stocks, to hire out the Hermitage’s halls to different businessmen and state officials, to organize rock concerts on Palace Square. And the preserves will become efficient in free-market terms by selling off their protected grounds. As a result, at the peak of them paying their own way, we will suddenly discover that Russia no longer has either the legendary Hermitage or the legendary Pushkin Hills, while there is a third-rate waxworks museum and another prestigious residential area where once there were the landscapes the poet knew.

But that’s not what the “sergeants” of culture really want. They are patriots of Russia, after all, and can’t sincerely wish to see that. Why then are they so insistent in demanding increased earnings and visitor numbers from museums and preserves, that ill-starred efficiency?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Most probably because they are simply unaware of any other criteria for assessing museums’ work.

And other criteria do exist?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Just imagine, they do.

And what are they?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Well, for example, Rotterdam University carried out research to measure the reputations of museums. The Louvre has the highest reputation. The Hermitage is in fourth place, with the British Museum after it. And the Dutch researchers discovered that the great museums’ reputation is significantly higher than the reputation of the most popular and authoritative global industrial brands. So, there is reputation. You also have to bear in mind that the Hermitage’s reputation contributes to the reputation of Saint Petersburg and of the country. In the same way, the high reputation of the Pushkin preserve effectively forms the reputation rating for Pskov region, which influences the success of the tourist industry.

I would remind all those who want to incorporate Russia’s museums into the free-market economy that our museums and national preserves are among the biggest employers in the country, which is of fundamental importance for the depressed areas in which they are, as a rule, located. They are wonderful economic operators, allowing people to work, to receive a decent wage and support their families. And that means maintaining social stability in the regions.

Let’s go further. The museum is the custodian of values and valuables. The quality of that custodianship is one of the most important measures of our work. But we have already spoken about that.

A museum or preserve should provide the people who visit with pleasure, but in accordance with the rules that we ourselves make.

What rules are these?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Let me draw a parallel. You can get pleasure from doing sport, investing a fair amount of effort and energy in the process, but you can also simply drink some wine, relax and get some pleasure from that too. Well, the pleasure that comes from visiting as museum is always connected with brain work, with a necessary mental effort. That is a museum rule that people have to follow. It’s a different matter that they should feel comfortable in the museum, that they should take in what they see willingly, with delight and enthusiasm. To use the same comparison: in physical exercise there is the concept of the “runner’s high” – a feeling of one’s strength, health and unlimited ability. Well, in a museum people should experience a high from discovery, from guesses that prove right, the delight of grasping the intentions of a genius. It is no coincidence that in the Hermitage we arrange exhibitions in “salvoes” – several at once on different themes. Why? So that our visitors have a choice, so that each of them can view what speaks more to them, what gives them greater pleasure. Further: we see to it that the information given to people is not excessive and overwhelming, but at the same time sufficient. That is where you need the experience and talent of real museum workers. Some need a guided tour, others only find that a hindrance. That means you have to give someone the opportunity to use a personal gadget and earphones. Therein lies the real accessibility of a museum and comfort in visiting it. Why is that important? Because a person should want to come back again and again.

Mikhail Borisovich, there you do have a wonderful criterion for the efficiency of a museum – repeat visits.

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Yes, of course! Only I implore you not to use that awful word efficiency. There’s a simple Russian word uspekh (success). Let’s use that and leave “effectiveness” to the “sergeants”. Yes, of course, repeat visits are a very important criterion for the success of a museum. It’s important for people to be drawn to go to a museum again and again. I remember how I felt drawn to go back to Mikhailovskoye [the Pushkin family estate in the Pushkin Hills] once again after my first time at the preserve. That’s a wonderful feeling.

Incidentally, it seems to me that the true friends of Mikhailovskoye, who live in various cities, towns and villages in our country and beyond, learnt how to perceive the Russian landscape in our museums, including the Hermitage. In order to fully appreciate the Pushkin Hills countryside, you need first to learn how to “read” a landscape in the paintings of the great masters on show in museums.

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Yes, you’re right. The club of Friends of Mikhailovskoye, like the Hermitage Friends Club is made up of people who are able to do the work in museums, able to obtain pleasure from that work. Walk around the halls of the Hermitage today and look at people’s faces. I am sure that you will see wonderful, inspired, beautiful faces. And that – a person’s inspired face – is the chief criterion of the success of museum work.
Much is said nowadays about the state commission. We are indeed a budgetary institution: the state gives us money and has the right to burden us with a state commission. As I see things, today that state commission should be formulated in this way – to humanize people, to give human warmth and compassion back to our embittered, harried fellow countrypeople in the grip of intolerance.
To preserve what is human in a person. There is nothing more important.