Ringing the changes
Kevin O'Flynn on how a British Council initiative is helping 12 of Russia's poorly resourced and understaffed regional museums to work together
In 2006 a group of curators and directors from Russian museums made their way to Perry Green in Hertfordshire, once the home of the sculptor Henry Moore.
The curators and directors, 12 in all, had been split into three groups. One from the south of Russia, the second from the Urals and the third from Siberia, each on a two-week trip organised by the British Council to visit galleries and museums to see what British contemporary art could go on tour around Russia.
The group fell for Henry Moore. It was too difficult and too expensive to send his sculptures to Russia, but 80 works of graphic art are now touring the country in an exhibition devoted to the sculptor.
Henry Moore: Master Printmaker is now in Novosibirsk after more than six months on tour. Travelling west through Siberia, it will take another year before it finally reaches the southern Black Sea resort of Sochi.
The tour, part of what the British Council calls the Russian Ring programme, is an attempt to link British and Russian museums through contemporary British art. UK museums involved include the Baltic, the Laing Art Gallery, the Hayward Gallery, the Design Museum, Tate and Kettle's Yard. In Russia, the illustrator and children's author Quentin Blake curated an exhibition of book illustrations, and a video installation by Pam Skelton based on the poems of Anna Akhmatova will also travel around the ring.
'For people around the age of 40, Henry Moore was a cult figure,' says Anna Genina, the assistant director of the British Council in Russia. She says his work would never have been allowed to tour in the Soviet Union when this generation was young: 'It is like a real miracle that he is here.'
The exhibition visits some of the most well known museums outside the cultural capitals of Moscow and St Petersburg. 'Each of the cities they head to,' says Genina are 'educational, scientific, and cultural centres.' They are also huge urban centres, with populations of up to 3 million people.
Nearly all the art museums in the ring are more than 50 years old and their collections are large. Of the 12 museums, five were created before the start of the Russian Revolution and the rest in Soviet times. The Krasnoyarsk Museum is the only one developed in the last 20 years.
A typical museum is the Samara Regional Museum of Art in the Volga region, which is housed in a 19th-century mansion once owned by a local aristocratic family. The merchant, Konstantin Golovkin, a dashing renaissance man, donated his collection to start up the museum. Other enthusiastic philanthropists and artists from Moscow and St Petersburg also gave to the collection.
When the museum was nationalised after the revolution, its collection grew as the state redistributed expropriated art, confiscated from those seen as class enemies. At this time a special commission in Moscow was devoted to dividing art among museums all over the Soviet Union. A local museum would also receive confiscated work taken in its area and donations from the museums in Moscow and St Petersburg.
The Russian museums in the ring are all important cultural centres but face longstanding problems with funding, innovation and renewal. None of them can compete with the museums in Britain in their approach to contemporary art and the curators who visited England recognised that.
'If it is an exhibition in Yorkshire, it will be no worse than one in London,' says Natalia Sokolova, the deputy head of the exhibition section at the Nizhniy Novgorod State Museum of Art, 'We have a big difference between the Hermitage and provincial museums.'
Museums are still recovering after being cast adrift by the break up of the Soviet Union when funding for staff and new acquisitions dried up and has yet to recover. But the break up also released museums from central control, which means provincial venues now have the independence to choose what to exhibit. As a result, museums now all have a strong emphasis on showing local artists.
All of the ring museums remain state owned, but they are regionally rather than federally funded, which leaves them reliant on the largess (and sometimes the whims) of the regional administration.
'We have lots of problems,' says Tatyana Petrova, the deputy director of academic work at the Samara Museum. 'We have a very small staff and not very high wages.' An average monthly wage for a museum worker in the regions is 4,000-6,000 roubles (£80 to £120); considering the average wage in Russia is close to £250 a month, this is low even by provincial standards.
Most museums are also technologically behind the west. They are in need of environmental controls, conditions are cramped and they lack enough staff.
This latter problem is universal, says Natalia Konalova, the chief archivist at the Yaroslavl Museum of Art. 'Young people do not want to come here to work.'
Nevertheless, there is optimism among museum workers as they sense a recent change of attitude in the government and a growing interest from the public over the past four or five years.
Museums have managed to hold on as an important part of the cultural life of the cities. They are regularly used for concerts and readings and for educational visits. Tickets are cheap. Most museums charge under £1 for entry, but also have a long list of discounts for students, children, pensioners and war veterans, with free entry on one day each month.
And now new money is starting to come in from the state and big companies. High oil and gas prices mean that the government and energy businesses have cash to invest and some of that is trickling down to the museums.
Along with the increase in state funds, there is a growing trend for businesses to donate to museums. This sense of social responsibility is partly a response to government's not-so-subtle nudging. It is also a link to the pre-revolutionary tradition of merchant benevolence.
Grants from metals magnate Vladimir Potanin helped the Volgograd Museum of Art create an educational programme. Severstal, one of the biggest metals companies in the world, announced in June a new charitable programme called Museums of the Russian North aimed at supporting fine art museums.
'If you look at museums now they are being refurbished and there is money for daily work. The state has just started to look again at the cultural field,' says Genina for the British Council. 'They believe in what they are doing and they can see that things are improving.'
However, the money coming into museums is still paltry. For now, the museums rely on what they always have relied on: the enthusiasm of the people who work there.
'We get pennies,' says Petrova. 'But as our late director said… even if they don't get anything, they will go to work as they are loyal to the museum… that is the only thing we can teach Britain.'
Kevin O'Flynn is a staff writer at the Moscow Times
The curators and directors, 12 in all, had been split into three groups. One from the south of Russia, the second from the Urals and the third from Siberia, each on a two-week trip organised by the British Council to visit galleries and museums to see what British contemporary art could go on tour around Russia.
The group fell for Henry Moore. It was too difficult and too expensive to send his sculptures to Russia, but 80 works of graphic art are now touring the country in an exhibition devoted to the sculptor.
Henry Moore: Master Printmaker is now in Novosibirsk after more than six months on tour. Travelling west through Siberia, it will take another year before it finally reaches the southern Black Sea resort of Sochi.
The tour, part of what the British Council calls the Russian Ring programme, is an attempt to link British and Russian museums through contemporary British art. UK museums involved include the Baltic, the Laing Art Gallery, the Hayward Gallery, the Design Museum, Tate and Kettle's Yard. In Russia, the illustrator and children's author Quentin Blake curated an exhibition of book illustrations, and a video installation by Pam Skelton based on the poems of Anna Akhmatova will also travel around the ring.
'For people around the age of 40, Henry Moore was a cult figure,' says Anna Genina, the assistant director of the British Council in Russia. She says his work would never have been allowed to tour in the Soviet Union when this generation was young: 'It is like a real miracle that he is here.'
The exhibition visits some of the most well known museums outside the cultural capitals of Moscow and St Petersburg. 'Each of the cities they head to,' says Genina are 'educational, scientific, and cultural centres.' They are also huge urban centres, with populations of up to 3 million people.
Nearly all the art museums in the ring are more than 50 years old and their collections are large. Of the 12 museums, five were created before the start of the Russian Revolution and the rest in Soviet times. The Krasnoyarsk Museum is the only one developed in the last 20 years.
A typical museum is the Samara Regional Museum of Art in the Volga region, which is housed in a 19th-century mansion once owned by a local aristocratic family. The merchant, Konstantin Golovkin, a dashing renaissance man, donated his collection to start up the museum. Other enthusiastic philanthropists and artists from Moscow and St Petersburg also gave to the collection.
When the museum was nationalised after the revolution, its collection grew as the state redistributed expropriated art, confiscated from those seen as class enemies. At this time a special commission in Moscow was devoted to dividing art among museums all over the Soviet Union. A local museum would also receive confiscated work taken in its area and donations from the museums in Moscow and St Petersburg.
The Russian museums in the ring are all important cultural centres but face longstanding problems with funding, innovation and renewal. None of them can compete with the museums in Britain in their approach to contemporary art and the curators who visited England recognised that.
'If it is an exhibition in Yorkshire, it will be no worse than one in London,' says Natalia Sokolova, the deputy head of the exhibition section at the Nizhniy Novgorod State Museum of Art, 'We have a big difference between the Hermitage and provincial museums.'
Museums are still recovering after being cast adrift by the break up of the Soviet Union when funding for staff and new acquisitions dried up and has yet to recover. But the break up also released museums from central control, which means provincial venues now have the independence to choose what to exhibit. As a result, museums now all have a strong emphasis on showing local artists.
All of the ring museums remain state owned, but they are regionally rather than federally funded, which leaves them reliant on the largess (and sometimes the whims) of the regional administration.
'We have lots of problems,' says Tatyana Petrova, the deputy director of academic work at the Samara Museum. 'We have a very small staff and not very high wages.' An average monthly wage for a museum worker in the regions is 4,000-6,000 roubles (£80 to £120); considering the average wage in Russia is close to £250 a month, this is low even by provincial standards.
Most museums are also technologically behind the west. They are in need of environmental controls, conditions are cramped and they lack enough staff.
This latter problem is universal, says Natalia Konalova, the chief archivist at the Yaroslavl Museum of Art. 'Young people do not want to come here to work.'
Nevertheless, there is optimism among museum workers as they sense a recent change of attitude in the government and a growing interest from the public over the past four or five years.
Museums have managed to hold on as an important part of the cultural life of the cities. They are regularly used for concerts and readings and for educational visits. Tickets are cheap. Most museums charge under £1 for entry, but also have a long list of discounts for students, children, pensioners and war veterans, with free entry on one day each month.
And now new money is starting to come in from the state and big companies. High oil and gas prices mean that the government and energy businesses have cash to invest and some of that is trickling down to the museums.
Along with the increase in state funds, there is a growing trend for businesses to donate to museums. This sense of social responsibility is partly a response to government's not-so-subtle nudging. It is also a link to the pre-revolutionary tradition of merchant benevolence.
Grants from metals magnate Vladimir Potanin helped the Volgograd Museum of Art create an educational programme. Severstal, one of the biggest metals companies in the world, announced in June a new charitable programme called Museums of the Russian North aimed at supporting fine art museums.
'If you look at museums now they are being refurbished and there is money for daily work. The state has just started to look again at the cultural field,' says Genina for the British Council. 'They believe in what they are doing and they can see that things are improving.'
However, the money coming into museums is still paltry. For now, the museums rely on what they always have relied on: the enthusiasm of the people who work there.
'We get pennies,' says Petrova. 'But as our late director said… even if they don't get anything, they will go to work as they are loyal to the museum… that is the only thing we can teach Britain.'
Kevin O'Flynn is a staff writer at the Moscow Times