Mikhail Piotrovsky: Why we need clouds

A meeting of the culture commission of the State Council has been held in Samara. The commission is headed by Dmitry Azarov, Governor of Samara Region.

The session was an extraordinary one, prompted by the fact that we are coming to the end of a second year of the pandemic and cultural institutions need support. A decision was made to allocate two billion roubles from the federal budget. Support should also be provided at the regional level. Representatives of the regions took part in the session.

This is important. Society in the form of the state has an obligation to support culture. it is a question of practical steps that are made compulsory by the amendment to the constitution. Besides that, there is a presidential decree that requires wages in cultural institutions to be kept at an average level for the region.

There has been a stubborn struggle to get that. Cultural institutions appealed to the government, explaining that support was vital. In today's difficult circumstances, they are doing a lot. Among other things, museums have become safe public spaces. At a difficult time, they are playing the role of “medicine” for people, keeping up ties between countries...

Here's one example. The Cultural Forum was cancelled due to the pandemic, but its museum component did take place. We opened exhibitions, held conferences and so on. We did everything that was planned, including a meeting of the Union of Museums of Russia. Museums are fulfilling their obligations. The state understands that. The pandemic has defined many things in relations between the state and cultural institutions.

We are adapting to the pandemic, creating methods of working that have stood the test and will now remain with us for ever.

When the Internet appeared – which wasn't all that long ago, remember –museums created their own websites which have proved particularly in demand during the pandemic. Now that virtual space stands in some ways in opposition to the real one, in other ways it is merging with it.

By tradition we hold Hermitage Days in December. They present the museum to people, combining the virtual with the real. This year, Hermitage Days are taking place not only in our city or even our country.

They have opened in Muskat, the capital of Oman. I remind readers that Muskat was the city where [the mediaeval Russian traveller] Afanasy Nikitin twice celebrated Easter on his way to India. An exhibition of Islamic art from the Hermitage collection opened there, and master classes were given on the restoration of artefacts from Palmyra. At the Regional Art Museum in Samara, the exhibition “Alfred von Vacano’s collection from the stocks of the Hermitage” is running. Alfred von Vacano was a prominent industrialist in Samara, an art collector and patron, a traveller, and the founder of the Zhigulevskoye Brewery. His collection contains around 350 works of decorative and applied art from Japan, China, India, Iran and Western Europe, but the most precious part has always been considered the Egyptian section, which gives a thorough idea about the beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians.

At the same time, Orenburg Is hosting Hermitage exhibitions devoted to the discovery of the state of Urartu and the study of the ancient Caucasus. A large exhibition about the horse gear of the tsars is taking place at the Hermitage–Siberia Centre in Omsk. In our Vyborg centre, the exhibition “Castles. Cathedrals. Palaces” is taking place. In Yekaterinburg in the Urals, an exhibition of a painting by Peter Brueghel the Younger has just opened at the Hermitage Centre.

The museum is exporting not just objects, but its brand, lectures, master classes, books, cinema, multimedia events. That sort of presence was devised long ago, but it is particularly in demand right now.

Our own city the Hermitage Days begin, as always on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. Many events are planned. They include the opening of a permanent display of the art of Iran and a huge exhibition commemorating Albrecht Dürer from the collections of the Hermitage and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. At the same time, there will be an exhibition of a Gutenberg Bible. The Gutenberg Bible is a sacred object, a symbol of the start of book-printing, a new stage in the information revolution after the appearance of writing. Now the following stage is taking place – the Internet. That Bible is kept in the Russian State Library in Moscow and is among the treasures displaced after the war. the exhibition provides various topics for thought and discussion: Gutenberg, printing, the Reformation, war... As always, our exhibitions are bound up with a whole complex of stories.

Besides that, we are presenting two paintings by the Italian artist Giacomo Ceruti from a museum in the city of Brescia and an exhibition of fashion photography from a private collection. A concert will be given by Teodor Currentzis’s choir, while a soundtrack performed by Currentzis’s orchestra will play at the Dürer exhibition.

And that's still not all. By the end of the year, a permanent display devoted to Peter the Great will be receiving visitors. The Rotunda with its triumphal columns will be the centre of it. At the same time, we will be opening a huge exhibition of Peter's costumes that are now undergoing restoration.

In Staraya Derevnya we will be opening a new block of the Restoration and Storage Centre, where we will be showing Russia's only automatic washing machine for tapestries, a print shop with the very latest equipment, x-ray machines, electron microscopes and 3D printers.

That is one side of the Hermitage's activities. Another is the new Celestial Hermitage project. The Hermitage is beginning to create its own double “in the clouds”. The first step is the entirely virtual exhibition of digital art “Etherial Aether”. To visit that, you need to go into the Internet. It’s a new way of presenting digital art.

Each year now on 7 December we put on a show on Palace Square. There will be a show, but a virtual one. Anyone who comes to the square will be able to point their smartphone at the General Staff building and see an animation devoted to Alexander Nevsky on its screen.

We are seeking to humanize the latest technologies. Together with the European University, we are planning to conduct research connected with digital art and we are creating a new school of arts.

Mention should be made of the special attention museums pay to inclusivity. It is a question not just of helping people with problems in perceiving the world around, but also of expanding our own perceptions, For example, a new tactile approach makes it possible to “see” the pattern of the world’s oldest carpet with your fingers and to feel the appearance of frescoes from Penjikent.

To some degree, inclusion also means what is referred to as concessions. We are trying to gradually reinstate them, choosing those who need help to interact with the museum.

State subsidies get extensive coverage. The museum is also trying to earn money itself. Recently the Hermitage gained some money from an auction of NFTs. From that sum, 70,000 dollars will go to Saint Petersburg in tax. That is with regard to the economic role of museums in the life of the city. And with regard to everything needing to be counted. This is also connected with the criteria for assessing the success of cultural institutions and the understanding that they contribute to the city’s economy not only by bringing in tourists, but also through taxes.

After obtaining some money, the museum is bringing back certain concessions. On the third Thursday of every month, the Hermitage gives entry free of charge to categories of visitors who have a right to that by law. Now it is also available to those people who before the pandemic enjoyed that concession on the museum’s initiative: schoolchildren, pensioners, the staff of other museums. I remind readers that all of those can visit the General Staff building free of charge. We have introduced one more rule: on any day entry is free of charge for children under the age of 14, invalids of the 1st and 2nd groups, invalids in wheelchairs and child-invalids. Pensioners and schoolchildren get a reduction on the ticket price. Free and reduced-price ticket have to be booked in advance through the museum website and there are quotas for them.

We are constantly reminding ourselves and those around us that nothing is free of charge nowadays. Concessions depend on having money coming in. Someone has to pay for everything: a philanthropist, the state, the museum, the person buying the ticket.

And so, the main news of the year is that the museum is counting money, understands where it is going and tells people about that.