Mikhail Piotrovsky: Ticket prices for the Hermitage will not go up

Mikhail Piotrovsky on the future after the pandemic

While everyone is discussing how to come out of self-isolation, colleagues of the Hermitage have gained that experience. The Hermitage centres in Kazan, Vyborg and Amsterdam have already re-opened. State Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky hopes that museums, by introducing temporary restrictions for visitors, will be able not only to guarantee their safety, but also to avoid a worsening of social stratification.

How is the emergence from quarantine going in such different cities?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: I would prefer to talk not of emergence from quarantine, but of the museum’s transition from online to offline. In particular the experience acquired in communication over the Internet will be of use in the new life in which we have all found ourselves, whether we like it or not.

In the new world that is coming into being before our eyes, it is very convenient to do everything remotely – to work, give lectures, watch films, conduct guided tours, planning meetings, conferences and even festivals. But the flipside of “freely surfing” on the net, is the strict regulation of life offline that was unimaginable only six months ago.

The present opening of the Hermitage centres is very important for us as a “pilot scheme”. Actually, that is also one of the purposes of our centres – to try out and refine new approaches to museum work.

The first to open was the Hermitage centre in the Kazan Kremlin. Tickets are sold for fixed entry times, 30 minutes apart. No more than 10 people can be in a hall at the same time. Tour groups contain a maximum of 5 people.

I heard that four people turned up on the first day in Kazan. Is that right?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: On the following days there were already 40 and 60 people. In ordinary times, they had between 200 and 400 visitors each day. People have to get used to the new situation, to new rules.

The exhibition, if I remember rightly, has remained the same – “Matisse. Picasso. Chagall. Western European Art of the 1910s–40s in the Hermitage Collection”?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Yes, it was a success. In actual fact, it tells the story of art between the 20th century’s two world wars.

It has an incredible selection of works: Chagall’s Bible illustrations, Goering’s favourite artists and Expressionists with a proletarian background. A very interesting project. Those who viewed it appreciated it. There have been no problems at all regarding the new system for visitors going around.

What about Amsterdam?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: The Hermitage Centre in Amsterdam admits 20 people at a time every 15 minutes. Roughly 500 per day. The tickets are sold out for every time slot. Local specifics manifested themselves in the fact that the idea of measuring people’s temperature at the entrance was regarded as an invasion of privacy in Holland. However, when they buy tickets online they do have to answer some health questions.

On entering the museum, besides the ticket collector, visitors are met by someone who inquires whether they have a temperature, a cough and so on. They have promised to send us the list of questions. If any doubt arises about the truthfulness of the replies, they may not let a person in, but I don’t think that has happened yet. Then the visitors go around following the markings, from one numbered square to another.

Like a game of hopscotch…

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Maybe. A few days ago, at the Davos Forum, there was a section where they discussed the future of theatres in the era of COVID-19. Theatrical people were saying that the arrangement of people in the auditorium and the foyer needs to be approached like a choreographic study.

When you start thinking that we will not have simply movement from square to square around the display cases, but modern choreography, it does not seem so depressing. Unfortunately, set routes are something we shall have to have for the moment.

The question is what that route should be like, with what alternatives, so that people feel safe on the one hand, but on the other don’t go crazy from the strictly regulated movement, like at an airport.

Last year the State Hermitage admitted 1,300,000 visitors free of charge

There is more space at airports. What about the small museum halls?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: In Amsterdam they have set up traffic lights next to the little rooms that have only one entrance. A green light means you can enter, a red light means you can’t. That’s in two or three spots. We’ll see how that works. Otherwise we’ll have to close those rooms altogether. There isn’t a lot of choice.

Is it locals who are coming?: There are no tourists?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: No tourists. Still, ordinarily at the Hermitage Amsterdam 60% of the visitors are from the Netherlands. We are pleased about that, by the way. We created the centre for Holland, for northern Europe as a whole. The Dutch, though, want to see more tourists. To that end, incidentally, they have changed how they position themselves among museums to some degree. Previously they stressed that the Hermitage Centre is an Amsterdam museum. Now the emphasis is different – on it being the Saint Petersburg Hermitage in Amsterdam. They decided that in the coronavirus era that makes more strategic sense.

Staking on the Hermitage brand?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Possibly. Incidentally, there has been a similar story with the Hermitage–Urals Centre that is supposed to open in the autumn. The Hermitage’s paintings were evacuated to Sverdlovsk and after the war we gave a large collection of works to the Sverdlovsk Picture Gallery. Strictly speaking, they could have opened a Hermitage centre there immediately after the end of the war. There were paintings enough for fifteen halls. Back then, though, it wasn’t fashionable. They wanted to do something of their own. The museum combined the paintings from the Hermitage with acquisitions from other museums. This year, though, the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts [as it is now] will be opening a separate building where the bottom floor will be halls for Hermitage exhibitions, while the next will display the works from the Hermitage that entered the museum’s collection after the war, and the top floor will have a display telling about the paintings’ life in evacuation.

Times change… At one point you need to promote your own local museum, at another it is worth underlining that you have a close kinship to a museum with a brand name.

Ties of kinship are wonderful, but how is the legal relationship between the Hermitage and its museum kin set up?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: It is a matter of principle that the Hermitage centres are not branches of it. A branch implies that we are responsible for its upkeep and so, if difficulties arise, the first thing that the “HQ museum” will sacrifice is a branch. On top of that, a branch is perceived as a gift “from someone else”.

What we want, though, is for the Hermitage centres to be a native, loved part of the place where they are created. For that reason, it is always an institution representing a local museum or foundation. Take Amsterdam – the initiator of the Hermitage centre is a local foundation, registered and operating according to Dutch regulations.

Besides, we insist that a Hermitage centre opens under the patronage of high officials of that city, republic or country. That forms part of the agreement. In the Netherlands it’s the royal family, in Kazan the president of Tatarstan…

Our conditions are the same everywhere – in Omsk, where the Hermitage–Siberia Centre opened last year, in Vladivostok, where everything still lies ahead, and in Shanghai, where they are so far only planning that kind of centre. You find the money, build the museum, take on its upkeep yourselves. We are not responsible for financing things.

The Hermitage only supplies the branding?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: That is already a lot, but it’s not all. We bring exhibitions, present our collections. The success of the exhibitions is determined, though, by the museum policy of the local Hermitage centre, its work with tourists, with the local community… And the people who work in those centres can justly considered themselves part of the Hermitage, one of the best museums in the world.

A traveller in the Hermitage: the route is laid out

Still, how is the move to offline going to happen in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Shall we begin with the good news or the bad?

The bad.

Mikhail Piotrovsky: The Hermitage has never had a separate entrance for exhibitions. The exhibitions were there for everyone who came to the museum. Sadly, now it seems we shall have to arrange separate entry for some exhibitions.

The second change is entry sessions. That, by the way, is something everyone was dreaming about before the pandemic. We said that it was impossible because people come to the Hermitage for the whole day. Now, though, the situation and sanitary requirements are dictating their rules. We are obliged to introduce sessions that limit a visit to the museum to two hours. There will be regular cleaning, disinfection and ventilation.

Will someone who has bought a ticket for one session be able to get into another session on the same day?

If they buy a second ticket, they will.

Will there be an organized choreography of set routes like in Amsterdam?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: There will be different routes with different entrances and different sessions – for individual visitors, for guided tours. The main problem will be how to show people the entire Hermitage. There will always be a demand for routes around the Winter Palace and the Hermitage picture gallery. But some want the Peacock Clock, others want Rembrandt. As a rule, the tourists come for the Peacock, the mummies and Leonardo’s Litta Madonna. Rembrandt is needed too, though. And some are interested in both the Peacock and The Prodigal Son. It’s still not very clear how we can combine all that, but in any case there will be set routes, sessions, several entrances, and separation of guided tours and individual visitors.

Will there still be no entry charge for pensioners?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: The Hermitage welcomed more than a million people a year free of charge. Those museum concessions were compensated from our own income: ticket sales, the souvenirs, shops, cafés… For the past three months we haven’t had that income. The prospects are that visitor numbers will inevitably drop. I am afraid that in the immediate future the museum will not be able to permit itself that previous pricing policy.

Under Russian legislation there are two categories of concessions that apply to museums: Heroes of Labour and those equated to them, plus once a month free entry for schoolchildren, students and large families. The law envisages concessions for those visitors, although it does not establish a mechanism for compensating the museum for the expense. For concessionary categories we shall either be setting aside particular sessions or allotting a certain quantity of tickets per day. At the moment, though, free of charge entry for pensioners will be beyond our means.

What about ticket prices?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Ticket prices will not go up. Now a ticket to the Hermitage costs 800 roubles. That’s the basic price. That will be changed. Since a ticket will be valid not for the entire day but for a single session, the starting price for a ticket will be less and across the board – 500 roubles. There will be changes to the special offers, that is to say the discounts that are dependent on our income.

And the good news?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: All these innovations will be in place till December. We are looking to celebrate Saint Catherine’s Day, the Day of the Hermitage, having bid farewell to the temporary restrictions and having met with the friends of the Hermitage.

The discrete charm of the original

Visiting a museum is becoming a luxury. Does that not disturb you?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: That is the most important issue. And it is not connected with ticket prices. Museums have so energetically informed people online about their collections, holding quests, games, encounters with the curators, that the impression might arise that this is the accessible museum that everyone dreamed of. No need to pay for a ticket, no need to leave your home. Drink your tea, put on your dressing gown and slippers and off you go – whether to the Louvre or to the Hermitage.

But that virtual visit is fine as a prologue to a real-life trip to the museum. That’s OK. People do prepare themselves for an encounter with the Litta Madonna, Rembrandt’s portraits or his Prodigal Son. It is ludicrous to announce on approaching the portrait of the Giaconda that she somehow “didn’t show herself” in those two minutes that you saw her among the crowd of tourists. It’s well known that the Mona Lisa can chose herself who she likes and who she doesn’t.

The problems will start if people try to tell us that this route into the museum replaces the actual encounter with the museum. I don’t know who invented the expression “social distancing”. Physical distancing between people is one thing. We wash our hands, keep a metre and a half apart, wear masks. The expression “social distancing”, though, carries an entirely different meaning, and not only in Russian. In essence, it is social stratification. If it ends up with us that the museum online is for those who can’t afford to see the Hermitage in person, while the offline museum is for wealthy tourists, then the very idea of the museum as a democratic instrument of enlightenment will be discredited. It is very important to ensure that safety measures do not turn into segregation measures.

You have always said that a museum is a temple of the muses? How does that accord with the idea of an accessible museum?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: A accessible museum is not one where you come and kick the door open. The museum is accessible to those who are ready for the meeting. In that sense, an open museum is a privilege, but humanity was striving for almost two centuries to make that privilege – the luxury of communing with art, if you like – available to all. Available, yes, but even so the Giaconda herself decides who she likes.

Strange as it may seem, perhaps the restrictions imposed by COVID-19, the new visiting rules that we are being forced to introduce temporarily for people’s safety, will serve as a reminder of the high cost of what is “just” given to us. The ability to breathe, for example. Culture is the air of our existence.

The government has listed museums and zoos among the structurally formative areas of the economy. Is that a promise of any kind of preferences for museums in the crisis situation?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Thanks to the Ministry of Culture, federal museums have been allotted money to compensate for “lost income”. Of course, the wages of staff and the upkeep of the buildings is partially covered by state subsidies. Another part came from the museum’s own takings. In the three months that the museum has had no visitors, there was also no income. It’s that part that is being compensated.

But the Hermitage is a separate item in the budget?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: The Hermitage and the Bolshoi Theatre get separate financing from the budget. Each month we submit a report on what is needed to keep the staff at the average wage level for the region. We reported for the first month, then for the second. As soon as museums reopen to visitors, the compensation payments will cease.

In my opinion, in the current situation museums’ budgets should be guaranteed by the state. At one time, when museums started to bring in money, we were told, “Great, earn more and part of the financial responsibility will be on you.” That is not going to work now, though.

But that’s a return to the Soviet model.

Mikhail Piotrovsky: No, similar does not mean the same. Today a museum’s budget can be based on three sources: the state, the income the museum earns and money from patrons, friends of the museum. That can provide freedom to manoeuvre.

Regional-level museums might not have those three supports. Add to that dependence on the local authorities. What freedom to manoeuvre is there in that case?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: That is the very thing that makes support from colleagues, society and the Union of Museums of Russia so important. By the way, regional museums have been exempted from profit tax. That is also important. Federal museums are not exempted.

Ideally, what’s needed is for the rule of compensation for lost income to be extended to regional and municipal museums, and the exemption from profit tax to the federal ones. Then we would be equal in a single museum sphere.

Better less, but better

Museums cannot expect to be receiving tourist this year. Does that upset you?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: As a museum director, yes. However, the number of tourists that come can’t be the main criterion of museum work. In just the same way, the successful functioning of a museum cannot be defined by the amount of money earned.

So, what should become the main criterion?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: For example, the number of visitors that a museum can allow in free of charge. Last year the Hermitage admitted 1,300,000 people free of charge. That means that the museum is earning enough to afford that. That criterion is both financial and ethical.

Today it is already possible to produce a mathematical model of the effectiveness of a museum’s work, but the main thing is to avoid people tossing the essence of museum work out of those models along with “insignificant” errors.

Incidentally, two years ago the Ministry commissioned the development of an algorithm for calculating visitor numbers in correlation with the area of the displays. It was supposed to determine how many people a museum can “accommodate”. The algorithm was approved and confirmed by the museum community. In my view, a different figure is just as interesting: how many visitors a museum wants to have over a year or a season. The upper limit is important here. Let’s say, for the Hermitage it’s 5,000,000 over the year. If there are more, then it’s cramped for the visitors and not healthy for the paintings.

Now a working group has been formed in the Ministry of Culture to draft a state commission in the cultural sphere. The choice of criteria for assessing work is, of course, very important for that. I believe that the assessment of work in terms of visitor numbers will be moved back to second or third place. We need to find the right solution.

A key question

On 23 May , the exhibition “A Renaissance Model of the Universe” was due to open in the Hermitage, at which people would have been able to see a 16th-century astronomical globe after restoration. We have been living for almost 500 years in the cultural model of the universe formed by the Renaissance. Is the model that will replace it emerging today?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: I wouldn’t risk generalizing. The new model will be constructed from those bricks, those images that we bring to it. Some of them, like this globe, which was presented to the Prince of Muscovy by Emperor Rudolf II, will come from our “domestic” collections. The age favours that. Another part will come from distant wanderings. For example, the pictures of the Chinese artist Zhang Huan, who paints with ashes. His exhibition was dispatched to Russia just as the first coronavirus patients were appearing in China. The crates containing works that engaged in a dialogue with the Hermitage’s paintings were sent to Saint Petersburg by ship. While they were at sea, the epidemic ended in China and began with us. That is why the works are waiting and not being unpacked. Over this period, the artist has painted new works devoted to the pandemic. How will they meet in the setting of our exhibition? Who knows. Who in general could have imagined that a protagonist called COVID-19 would become part of this whole story?

Many exhibitions have been cancelled, but “After Raphael” – about the great Italian’s “reflection” in the mirror of world art as represented in the Hermitage – has remained. As has “The Iron Age”, a joint project between museums in Russia and Germany. From all these projects an outline forms of our museum universe. Perhaps it will be a new one. Generally speaking, though, the museum always tries to preserve the best of what came before.