On 14 and 15 March 2019, the Council Hall of the State Hermitage was the venue for an international conference, the central purpose of which was discussion of problems connected with updating the museum space –the architecture of buildings, the design of exhibitions and permanent displays, curatorial and educational programmes in interaction with today’s public.
At a time when new technologies are actively penetrating into various spheres of contemporary life, the museum, while remaining a custodian of classic values, cannot avoid reacting to the changes going on around it. Museums are becoming one of the most important cultural institutions and they attract visitors not only with exhibitions, lectures and cultural programmes, but also with modern, comfortable and creative facilities.
The first session, devoted to the design of displays and exhibitions, was opened by Elena Kalnitskaya, Director of the State Peterhof Museum-Preserve. Reflections on the interaction between the museum and the theatre and on the proposition that “museums should be made with the help of theatrical people, with the desire to present not so much an object as a phenomenon in all its breadth” were illustrated by five historical and cultural projects implemented at Peterhof: “The Court Entertainments”, “The Birth of the Russian Opera” in the Picture House, “Peterhof Summer Residents” in the Farm Palace, “Oranienbaum through the Ages” and the “Museum of Playing Cards”.
In the course of the discussion, Pavel Prigara, Director of the St Petersburg Manege Central Exhibition Hall raised questions about the return of the role of curator in the process of creating exhibitions and a sensible balance of forces.
The designers Andrew Shellutto and Mitya Kharshak presented what they consider a successful example of graphic design accompanying museums. The artist and theatre director Vera Martynova shared some interesting thoughts on “playing the fool in the museum”, the contest for visitors and the museum as display. Together with the curator Xenia Malik, the conference participants and audience came back to the Hermitage’s exhibition practice and recalled striking architectural events within the museum’s walls.
The block ended with the theme of biennale, explored through the example of two cities. The designer Olivier Peyricot, Director of the Saint-Étienne International Design Biennale, spoke about many contemporary designs and about “the biennale prototype as a place for experimentation and the demonstration of the complex links between various fields”. Elena Kolovskaya, the director of the PRO ARTE Foundation and head of the Petersburg Biennale of Museum Design international festival, spoke in turn about the experience in our city.
The second discussion dealt with new forms of educational programmes and the sort of space they organize around them.
The most important topics – the rethinking of concepts and practices, the relevance of art, curatorial and managerial exhibitions, “the importance of coupling the orientation of the exhibition and the accompanying educational programme” and the way that “mediation should accord with the changes that we want to make to communication in the display – were raised by Alexei Boiko, leading methodologist for museum educational activities at the State Russian Museum.
Members of the Hermitage staff shared their experience of the co-existence within the museum of classic and innovative methods of working with the public. Senior researcher Liudmila Davydova brought up the important idea of the art of intellectual leisure, otium ludens. As an example of a “special visit to the space” she mentioned the Intellectual Marathons that have become a Hermitage tradition in recent years.
Representatives of the Museum of St. Petersburg Art (20th–21st centuries), the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art and the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts also shared their experiences.
On the second day of the conference the tone was set by Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky’s words about “how the museum structures the space around it, the atlantes become a pagan temple, and the Hermitage both a tourist attraction and a place of solitude.”
The session on “Innovative designs for museum architecture and their influence on a change in museum ‘climate’” brought leading architects and designers of museum spaces together around the table.
The right to speak first was accorded to the architect Hani Rashid, who knows first-hand about the interactions between a museum and a design bureau. He spoke about his manifesto, “the search for the unexpected in the conversation with cities and people”, the Hermitage–Moscow project, architectural quotations, provocations and the magic of a building at the moment of its transitions “from tectonic monumentality to atmospheric celebration”.
Continuing the discussion about museum reconstruction projects, colleagues from Helsinki and Philadelphia shared their experience. Kai Kartio, the director of the Amos Rex museum in the Finnish capital, spoke about the recently completed project and about “what new approaches a museum should find to meet the demands of the future”, while Jane Lawson-Bell from the Philadelphia Museum of Art spoke about plans for the reconstruction of the American museum and the difficult and complex task that still lies ahead.
Elizaveta Likhacheva, Director of the State Shchusev Museum of Architecture, and the architect Nikita Yavein, head of the architectural bureau Studio 44, told about projects in this country.
The final session was devoted to “blockbuster” exhibitions and the reason for their success with the public. Colleagues from Moscow museums, Marina Elzesser, Alexandra Danilova and Irina Bakanova, shared their thinking on why monographic exhibitions are in such demand at the moment, why it became fashionable to visit them, what is to become of museums that do not have the capacity to create blockbusters, and how to organize a blockbuster without queues by working on the “throughput” of the museum cloakroom.
Among St Petersburg “blockbusters” mention was made to the recent Piero della Francesca exhibition that the curator Stanislav Savitsky compared to some “not cultural, but cult act of communion”.
Rounding off the discussion, the artists Vitaly Pushnitsky, Pavel Ignatyev and Katya Bochavar shared their experience of interaction with museums.
“What is the 21st-century museum? – A blockbuster in the Hermitage, a bomb in a place of solitude.” Those words concluded the work of the conference.
The conference was organized by the State Hermitage’s Youth Centre with the support of the Aksenov Family Foundation, the Diaghilev Postscriptum international festival, the Institut Français de Russie and the PRO ARTE St Petersburg-based foundation for culture and art.
