Living the legacy

Hermitage Museum director Mikhail Piotrovsky on the mutualistic relationship of art institutions and their audience.

By DAVID STROMBERG
Hermitage State Museum 521 (photo credit: Hermitage State Museum)
Hermitage State Museum 521
(photo credit: Hermitage State Museum)
At the recent International Tourism Conference in Jerusalem, Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, reminded the assembled that museums are about real things and real history.
“Everything has become virtual, while museums present the real things which people see in books or on the Internet,” said Piotrovsky, an Arabist who studied and worked in Egypt and Yemen before joining the Leningrad branch of the Institute for Oriental Studies. “Museums have a human energy, an artistic energy. It has been proven all over the world by people who stand in line to get into them.”
Piotrovsky spoke during a panel on “cultural tourism” organized by Israel Museum director James Snyder. The panel also included Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas Campbell, Van Gogh Museum director Axel Rüger and Art Institute of Chicago director James Cuno. One central idea, discussed in particular by both Rüger and Campbell, was tailoring tourists’ particular needs – in terms of both language and cultural context – rather than offering a “one size fits all” option.
Piotrovsky, however, disagreed and offered a different approach – one in which the Hermitage dictates its own content. “The product presented,” he said, “should not be tailored to the tourist.” He looks at tourists as making up only a part of the museum’s visitors, which includes, children, students and other members of the local population. “The museum is part of people’s life in the city,” he added.
“People must stay longer in the city,” said Piotrovsky. Hence, “there has to be the content and information for staying longer.”
With this in mind, he explained a need to engage the city’s residents with the museum through various programs and projects.
These include the creation of new galleries, restoration of old ones and opening up circulation, which the Hermitage has done with passages leading from the museum’s main entrance on Palace Square directly to the Neva River embankment.
It also means changing the museum’s approach to storage, taking paintings usually kept in basements and hanging them salonstyle so that visitors see 10 works on a single wall. There is even an idea floating around of a museological exhibition consisting of the Hermitage’s wide collection of vitrines (showcases).
THESE IDEAS, and many others, are all part of a large project called “Hermitage 2014,” which is intended to coincide with the museum’s 250th anniversary. Implemented under the researched master plan of renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to turn the Hermitage into an urban quarter, the project is meant to articulate the general idea of what to develop in the museum in the 21st century.
Such a project “should go beyond certain 20th century” influences, says Piotrovsky.
According to him, these include the market economy as well as the dictates of the “client,” which he says can include the visitor, the donors or the government.
“The museum is an educational place,” he contends. “It knows what people should see” without being told by other government institutions.
Another aspect of the project involves, beyond opening circulation around the museum, expanding and reorganizing its exhibition spaces. One major part of this will involve a complete renovation of the General Staff Building across Palace Square from the Winter Palace.
Art from the 19th and 20th centuries will move to the General Staff Building, which will also include exhibitions of contemporary art. The move is part of Piotrovsky’s view that modern 20th-century art and contemporary 21st-century art are not separate entities – that they are in conversation with each other.
This notion, too, is focused into an ongoing project which Piotrovsky calls “Hermitage 20/21,” and has included such exhibitions as An Incident at the Museum (2004), the first installation by artist Ilya Kabakov in Russia since his emigration in 1987 (and the first exhibition of a living artist at the Hermitage Museum), the USA Today exhibit (2007/8) of contemporary American art and the Newspeak exhibit (2010) of contemporary British art. AND WHILE Piotrovsky keeps his eye on the present and future, he is acutely aware of its connection to the past. This not only means understanding the “close connections” between historical art and contemporary art, but also the specific history of the place in which art – in its widest sense – is exhibited and viewed by the public.
“The specialty of the Hermitage is that the entirety of Russian history is in the building,” says Piotrovsky. “It’s the story of the place itself.”
One question he asks is how to explain the stories embedded in the place – from Peter the Great and Catherine the Great to the days of the Siege of Leningrad during World War II and beyond – in a way that will go along with the experience of viewing art. The idea is to bring in more history into the Hermitage experience, this way expanding the museum’s role in the city.
One attempt at such a project last year turned the museum’s Hanging Garden into a vegetable garden – which had been done during WWII to stave off starvation during the blockade years. This project involved a ceremony and was meant as a way of remembering the war years.
“The capital left the city [of St. Petersburg under Soviet rule], but the central place remained,” says Piotrovsky. This place is the State Hermitage Museum. “In a sense it took the emperor’s place.”
This history comes with sense of a responsibility – that of continuing the legacy both of the museum and Russia.
That means that whatever project the museum sets upon has to have some connection with either its content or its past.
It also means engaging projects that are emblematic of St. Petersburg.
“The way for the museum to exert its influence,” says Piotrovsky, is “by emphasizing its niche and remaining connected to the Hermitage tradition.”