Mikhail Piotrovsky: Using the Templates of the Pandemic

Not so long ago a pornographic website published a selection of erotic fantasies based on the subjects of paintings in famous museums. Fortunately, the Hermitage – a chaste museum – was not included. Lawyers for the Uffizi Gallery and other museums are planning to sue. By law, presumably, it is a breach of copyright. The museums did not give permission to use the works that are in their keeping.

Today people are fond of “enlivening” paintings, taking photos and selfies. In this case, however, the enlivening was of a specific nature. How can you counter that? The museums say that their copyright has been infringed. In response they get to hear: “We live in a democratic world. Art is public property that people can do what they want with. Museums’ rights are a debatable matter.” I hope that the museums win that battle. Still, that is just one of the problems relating to our future.

The pandemic will go on for a long time. We need to construct a future from the way we are living today. There are many issues that made the pandemic worse and we need to tackle them. Where is the legal right and where is the state’s right to do what it wants? Where are internal obligations, restraint, the rules of decency, and where is censorship?

There is more: where is denunciation and where investigation? If the prosecutor’s office launches an investigation based on a tip from outside, some letter or publication, that is generally considered a denunciation in Russian culture. It raises the question of whether the denunciation is a signal meant for the authorities or for whom? Information about investigations, about corruption is becoming an important political force. There is often mention of people making a deal with the prosecution. Again in our traditions, that is a question of morality. Repentance or betrayal?

Today endless expressions of repentance can be heard in the world. It is customary to apologize for the sins of the past, to repent, to take down monuments… We have already been through all that. After the October Revolution, people cursed the empire, that “prison of peoples”. They repented, tore down monuments and created a system under which the previous ruling classes – the nobility – were unable to enter university, while the workers, on the contrary, received privileges.

Now, when in America and Europe it is customary to do penitence for an awkward choice of word or act, it is possible to recall that we here used to have a practice of making complaints to the party committee. Any woman could do that and make the offending man’s life barely worth living. There were purges. People confessed their sins and errors. Today, in the light of the latest trends, it’s useful to look back at our own experience.

Where am I going with this? To the fact that the world is changing. A new model is being constructed, using the templates created by the pandemic. Much of what has appeared now is the recipe for life going forwards. We need to choose what to keep and what to get rid of.

It is clear that there will no longer be crowds of visitors in museums. The pandemic forced that on us. We let as many people in as the museum can accommodate. We will work longer hours, without days off… Everyone will get to the museum but just dropping in whenever you want is no longer possible.

Among the innovations of recent times, it is interesting to observe the transformation of the system of public adult education. Now it operates not only “face to face”, but also online, through lectures, Instagram, live broadcasts…

At a recent meeting, someone in the museum community remarked that it was a good thing that those stupid tourist trips had ceased. Now we have seen for ourselves that we can manage without them. Clearly the value of travel has only increased. There was a time when many people would gather somewhere so as to settle some important questions or other. It turns out that it costs nothing to bring 50 people together on Zoom. After that, it emerges that not all of them are needed to deal with the matter. Three or four would be enough.

It is obvious that museums’ stable income should not be based on daily ticket sales. In the new Constitution, it is written that culture is ensured and protected by the state. That is a duty of the state. Some items are covered in the state budget, but salaries should to a considerable extent be paid from takings and should not be lower than the average in the region. Here state guarantees are unavoidable.

One of the instruments of charitable activity is the endowment fund. People invest money in a museum, and, to the extent of its inventiveness, the museum obtains an income from those funds. At a time of crisis that is difficult to manage.

There is also an ethical aspect – “Does the money smell?” From whom you can take money, and from whom you can’t. In the West people pay attention to that. Among other things, they insist that museums not take money from oil companies, as they are harming the environment. In the Hermitage we weigh everything up very strictly. We do take money from oil companies and will continue to do so, because in that way they are providing some sort of compensation for damaging the environment. Recently we received an amusing proposal. For an exhibition, pictures have to be brought in by plane. Aeroplanes also damage the environment. The suggestion was to plant a forest so as to neutralize the harm done by organizing the exhibition.

Stability through compensation is part of public and museum ethics.

One ethical question is the never-ending discussions about museum redistribution. People propose acting as in the 1920s and passing things out from the big museums to small ones. Again there is talk about the Shchukin-Morozov collection in the Hermitage. The idea of redistributing everything runs contrary to stable development. The need arises for museums to defend themselves. Even when calls for restitution break out around the world, museums refrain from making demands on each other. There is cooperation that may collapse due to arguments. If demands on each other are put forward, exchanges between museums will come to a halt. Trust between cultural institutions, just like trust between people, is vital.

I often repeat that the opportunity to interact with culture is a luxury, a gift of fate. Now there is discussion within the government of creating a “Pushkin Card” that will allow young people aged 14 to 22 to visit cultural institutions. The idea of issuing a card with a certain sum of money on it, so that young people can use it to pay, in museums and elsewhere, is wonderful. No-one is explaining how it will work, though. How will the museum get that money? We are receiving papers with a long list of what the museum needs to do so that people can use the card to visit. The arrangements for settlements using cards in the financial sphere have been perfected. That’s not the case in culture, though. People should be given concessions, but the museum should not suffer financial losses.

Social programmes are a method of interacting with the community. Therein lies the virtue of the museum. What is needed is social programmes for young people, for those with impaired vision, for certain categories of pensioner… The Hermitage has its own system for a hierarchy of accessibility. We are not able to immediately bring back all the financial privileges that existed before the pandemic. We are bringing them back gradually. For example, pensioners and students have been able to get into the General Staff building free of charge for a long time now. There are no build-ups of people there.

In general, what is important for a post-Covid society is the accessibility of information above all else. A favourite word is storerooms; from there, people tell us, we should distribute everything. For the Hermitage, the storerooms are the open storage facilities in Staraya Derevnya and satellites in other cities. In Yekaterinburg, the Hermitage–Ural centre recently opened. Now on the top floor of the Winter Palace, the Reserve Galleries have opened, where things from the storerooms are being exhibited: European painting, Oriental painting. They are arranged on a different principle from that of the main display. Another version of the story. Here we have combined Middle Asia and Central Asia. Here you can see how Chinese and Indian influences collide on the vast territory of Central Asia. This is topically relevant now. People are writing about global clashes between China and India in world politics. There has always been cultural influence.

A wonderful exhibition of Thorvaldsen has opened in the Picket Hall. Next to the drawings, the reliefs have acquired a real sparkle. Those reliefs have never been exhibited before. They are not great masterpieces in themselves, but together with the drawings and sculpture it has turned out well. Such an exhibition might be called a “slow reading”.

That's what happened with Raphael's Belle jardinière. The painting didn’t make it to the big exhibition. If it had been there, people would have looked only at it or else passed it by, absorbed with other things. Now you can look at this painting on its own, read it slowly, remember the big exhibition, discuss who painted it, who finished it...

Slow reading is what is needed for our future life. Say fewer words, don’t rush, don’t run. Slowly read books, paintings, documents, letters, the contracts that you sign... If you read slowly, there will be no hullaballoo. One of the legends about the Flood says that the gods sent it because they were angry at people for making a lot of noise..